


Where The People Are

by crookedswingset



Series: Chasing Down A Daydream [1]
Category: Deadpool (Movieverse), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man - All Media Types
Genre: (okay only some of them), ALL THE DEADPOOL WARNINGS, Abandonment, Angst, Dick Jokes, Drink to Forget, Explicit Language, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Is this what rarepair hell feels like?, Loss of Powers, Mental Health Issues, Multi, Not Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Standard Deadpool Warnings Apply, Suicidal Thoughts, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-18
Updated: 2019-02-19
Packaged: 2019-07-13 21:43:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 30,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16026554
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crookedswingset/pseuds/crookedswingset
Summary: Getting over it was a shitshow. It was like stumbling your way down a dark hallway barefoot, knowing your next step could very well land you in a jackass kid’s pile of legos. Except there was always going to BE a pile of legos. Your only choice? Keep walking or sit down and give up.Giving up wasn’t in their vocabulary.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Post-Infinity War meets Deadpool Movie Universe
> 
> Pairing: pre-Vanessa/Wade/Peter. Please note that they don't meet for several years, and they don't meet in this fic. Peter has to get home first.
> 
> Also note that the tone of the series will bounce from dark to light hearted and fluffy. This story is probably the darkest one. Beware of talk of suicide (Wade and others) in this story.

First, Wade wanted it to be perfectly clear that this whole Infinity Affair business was a shitty deal. Even if it did get him voted as New York City’s Top Superhero by the Daily Bugle 2 years in a row, his was the superior movie, and he went through a lot of fucking trouble to earn that credits scene retcon. No one was fridging his girl, especially not his coward fucking writers.

Then Thanos happened. Losing Vanessa that second time? It _really_ made him lose what little was left of his marbles--and he’d only had the two left anyway. Ever since Francis, they sat delicately on the edge, like a cup that an asshole cat was about to knock over. 

And boy, were they knocked over. Vanessa was about 90% of his impulse control and, without her in flesh or spirit, without a lost cause and a lost kid like Russell to focus on, Wade went fucking postal. He went after Thanos a 1000% stronger than he ever went after Francis. Maximum. Fucking. _Effort_ ,

So. He went to New York, leaving Boston with enough firepower to take over a third world country. Or a small alien colony. He wasn’t picky. He’d like to say he found himself on the journey over. That he had a character building road trip with his goofy but sincere sidekicks. That his found family kept the jagged pieces of him together just long enough for him to start healing on his own, start grieving on his own without leaving (more) dead bodies in his wake. 

Ha, Freaking. _Ha._

The truth of the matter was that he was alone the entire fucking time. And maybe that was the worst part of it. (Or the best.) He was accountable to no one. Responsible to no one. (Cared about by no one.) Not that it mattered, in the end.

When he finally got to New York, there was not much there but scared citizens holed up in their buildings, an incompetent and half-crippled military trying to build a perimeter, and an army of aliens rummaging around for shiny things and shiny people to take back to their spaceships. 

What happened next could only be described as a lot of goddamn catharsis and maybe even a bit of murder-therapy. (Okay, not a bit. A lot. A fuckton, even--was that an accessible unit of measurement? Asking for a friend.) Whatever a “fuckton of murder therapy” meant in real terms, the pleasant side effect was New York City being freed from alien occupation. 

Yup. Him. _Deadpool._ Go figure.

Oh, he was definitely going to take credit for it, but he wasn’t going to lie and say that it was his intention. Or even that he was happy to do so. After all that effort, the only things he figured out were that a, Thanos wasn’t on Earth anymore, and b, the aliens he was fighting were merely drones, little better than moist meat bags.

But Wade didn’t exactly have a backup plan. He didn’t have a Jiminy Cricket--or a Colossus--on his shoulder. He didn’t have a dead girlfriend giving cryptic information from the great beyond. He didn’t even have Dopinder there to give him free rides or, more importantly, general hope for humanity. 

He just had himself--Wade Winston Wilson. And that guy fucking _sucked_.

So for 18 long months, he killed, and he killed, and he fucking _killed_. And somehow, in the eyes of New Yorkers, that made him a hero. Nuts, right? It turned out the people like killing when the killing was aimed at the right targets, a lesson he’d somehow forgotten since his 6-year stint in Special Forces. 

But the fringe benefits were super, and the discounts were real. Plus, thanks to his openness to selfies with the normies, #Deadpool was trending for, like, ever--so suck it, Iron Man. The newfound adoration and fame almost made up for being mistaken for some spider-themed, style-stealing spandex do-gooder. 

All that aside, though… Whether you were a hero or villain or normie, life sucked for everyone after space Barney ruined the universe, and Wade wasn’t just saying that because he was lonely. 

But yeah, he could have used someone. A role model. A frenemy. Anyone to convince him that a bullet to the brain was not the best way to induce sleep at night. But there was no one. That single finger snap didn’t just rip Vanessa from his life. It decimated _everyone_. The only one it spared was Cable, who made like a deadbeat dad and left for greener pastures and his more photogenic family. 

(Again, to be fair--because being fair was a hero thing, damnit--there was something in there about Cable’s explanation that involved saving the future and needing to stave off the impeding Lord of the Flies situation brewing at Prof McWheely’s house now that there were no adults. But Wade missed most of it, too busy at the time making a long fart noise with his mouth. Fuck Brolin, anyway. Who murders their daughter?)

But Wade was Wade, and Wade was a survivor even before Francis made him functionally immortal. So he found a rhythm to it--by day, murder. By night, suicide. He enjoyed the praise. He enjoyed the fear. He embraced the loneliness and god-awfulness of it all, and he did it without hesitation. 

Because, in the end, what choice did he really have? There was no out. Not for him.

This was _the end of the line, pal,_ and there was no Herbal Essence model there waiting for him. Wade was gonna be like this, alone, until someone figured out how to finally kill him.

So 18 months into the mess, he was biding his time and waiting for the shiny spit polish of his reputation to fade as he hunted down the last of the aliens on the east coast. If they didn’t have any new information for him, he had a bad feeling that his next target would have to be the limping, wounded Avengers. 

Vanessa would have kicked his ass for it. She was sweet on Captain America. So was Wade, to be honest. But he never let personal feelings get in the way of an assignment, so if he had to go after Steve Rogers, he damn well would. 

Fortunately, Wade didn’t have to test that resolve, because 18 months and three days in, 3.3 billion people suddenly roared back to life with a collective scream.

It was a nightmare. Total chaos and pandemonium, even in the little town Wade was in. People fell from the sky. Windows shattered. Cars and buses crashed. And beyond all of that, a steady whine of cop and ambulance sirens rose to deafening decibels, beating out the usual drone of distant motors and conversation inherent to suburban life. 

It took him way, _way_ too long to figure out what that meant.

-

Peter was unmade 4 months shy of his seventeenth birthday on the planet Titan. It was… bad? Yeah, bad. It wasn’t every day your enhanced super senses screamed out a warning to the end of half the universe a full minute before it took you out too. 

But it wasn’t the end of things. Not really. Because seemingly seconds later, he was choking his way back to existence. 

He was alone, flat on his back on orange dirt, writhing under a phantom pressure. He gasped and gasped and gasped, tears running down his face as he flopped inelegantly on his stomach, trying and failing to drag oxygen to his withered lungs. 

As it was, Peter had just enough air to watch Dr. Strange stagger to his feet, fiddle with his hands, and disappear through a portal. It snapped closed behind him with a finality that made Peter’s stomach twist in unrealized dread. He clutched at the dirt, wheezing faintly.

“Oww...” 

That wasn’t him. Peter dragged his eyes away from the empty space to blink at one of the space ladies. She was clutching her forehead with a grimace, antennae wiggling through her fingers. She dragged her head up, blinking large liquid black eyes at the sky. 

Duty reasserted itself as his number one priority. _Shake it off_ , Peter lectured himself. _Shake it-_ He pulled himself to his feet, knees rattling. He went light headed immediately and grabbed blindly at someone who wasn’t there. He turned his head left and right, looking for a telltale gleam of red and gold.

He couldn’t find it. The dread he felt seeing Dr. Strange’s cloak slip through the portal intensified--not quite like his spidey sense, but close. Like maybe his lizard brain had picked up on something his developed brain was ignoring out of stubbornness and self-preservation. 

Still, May didn’t raise an impolite nephew. He lurched forward. “You okay?”

The space lady didn’t seem to know what to do with his arm at first. After a beat, she grabbed it. “We lost,” she said in a small voice. He helped her stand. Her hand lingered on his forearm, lightly grasping at the metal. As flexible as the new armor was, he couldn’t feel a thing. She seemed as weak-kneed as he was feeling and leaned on him to compensate. He didn’t mind.

“Don’t lose often, huh?” He looked out across the war torn landscape, doing a quick head count of groaning allies. There was the gray guy and the half-human, but no blue lady. No Mr. Stark either. That strange lizard-brain dread surged forward again. 

Peter blinked rapidly. “Where’s everyone else?” he croaked. He could feel the vein in his neck fluttering quickly, tight heat swamping his face. 

The Earth guy stood up first. “They’re not our priority,” he said brusquely, his voice shifting into a I-am-a-leader-so-listen-now tone. 

“Not even Nebula?” rasped the gray guy, who was rubbing the back of his neck. Peter grimaced. He _really_ had to work harder on remembering the names of these guys.

The Earth guy’s expression crumbled slightly, his veneer of leadership dulling slightly. “No. Yes. Maybe. What the hell, Drax.” He took a couple of deep breaths. “She’s not a priority right _now_. She’s not”--he did a wide, circular motion towards them--”one of us. Not a guardian. Guardian-adjacent, maybe.”

“Then who is our priority, Peter Quill?” the lady challenged, arms crossed over her chest. She glared. Peter jerked slightly, then swung his gaze to his name twin. 

Peter Quill wasn’t having a great day. His jaw was jumping. He was a big guy, a tall guy--much taller than Peter Parker, for sure--but he seemed smaller now, diminished in a way that Peter himself could only identify as grief. 

Quill didn’t make eye contact with anyone. “Gamora,” he breathed finally. 

After a long beat, Quill made a sharp motion with his hand. Stronger, he said, “I’m not going to leave her body on some backwater-” Quill breathed deep through his nose, then lifted his red eyes from the ground. He gazed at his friends, imploring. “Help me find her. Help me find the planet Thanos left her on. Then we figure out how to find Groot and Rocket.” Drax opened his mouth. “ _And_ Nebula.”

A lone gust of wind stirred the dirt around them, strong enough to push at some of the lighter bits of debris on the ground. Peter dropped his foot on one such piece, then removed it. Scratched red and gold paint greeted him, hollowing him out. He picked it up, rubbing a thumb over the metal.

Quill hesitated for a moment, watching Peter, then turned around and walked off. Drax immediately followed him. Peter kept staring at the ground, eyes jumping from mud caked Iron Man piece to mud caked Iron Man piece, mind racing, spinning, and discarding theories. _No, no, no, no-_

Then a hand touched his arm--the lady. It shook him out of his head like nothing else could. “Oh, hi, miss.” 

“My name is Mantis,” she offered, with a patient smile, like she thought he was a little dumb.

It was okay. Peter was a little dumb. He felt even dumber like this. “Hi, Mantis.”

“Thank you for saving me,” she said sincerely, grasping one of his hands in hers.

Peter winced. “I… tried?” 

Mantis cocked her head to the side, frowning suddenly. Her antennae were glowing. “Mr. Spider-Person-”

Almost about to correct her--he was Spider- _Man_ , not Spider-Person! Very important distinction--he stopped and yanked his hand away from her, staggering back. Her face was reflecting everything he felt, every aching piece of it, and he hated it. Seeing it in her amplified everything in him, and it was almost too much--too much!--to deal with.

All at once, he was swamped with everything he was feeling. His eyes were burning. His chest was tight. He was drowning under a suffocating sensation of being forgotten, being left behind, being lost like some stupid kid at a mall who really should have been keeping an eye on his aunt and uncle but wasn’t because he was stupid, stupid, stupid- 

“Sorry,” he said flatly. He shuddered. "The gloves, they’re, um, thinner.”

A wizard like Dr. Strange could have teleported him home. Why didn’t he _say_ anything?

“I’m fine,” he insisted, answering a question no one was asking. He felt half his age, suddenly. It wasn’t great. 0/10, would like to not feel again.

Mantis’ mouth was quivering, her eyes luminous. “You’re not fine, you’re-”

“Mantis!” Quill barked, voice echoing across the graveyard of a planet.

She shot a conflicted look over her shoulder at the shout, and Peter pounced on it. “No, no, it’s all okay, see? Mr. Stark will be back soon. Or Dr. Strange. Right? I just saw him. He'll be back in a second.” He forced a smile. “Hey, I’ll even keep an eye out for your blue friend, okay? Nebula, right?”

“ _Mantis_!”

Mantis jumped a little at that. Reluctantly, she pulled away, tentatively convinced by Peter’s smile, his shooing gestures, all of which faded quickly when the last of her hair whipped around a crumbling building. 

He stared after her longer, longing and wishing for someone to--remember him? Worry about him? Drag him, an odd and dangerous stranger, along for some mission that was clearly very personal? Guardian business?

Dismissed. Unimportant. _Ignored_. Nothing new, in the end. When Ned asked him what space was like, he was going to say “high school” and laugh. And he was going to laugh now too.

Any minute now.

Peter rubbed a rough hand over his face, watching dully as a spaceship shot up in the air before tearing towards the horizon with a burning glow. 

Then it was gone.

The wind picked up again, dry and heavy with ash and dust. He rubbed at his face again, letting out a shuddering sigh. He wasn’t making a mistake… was he? 

No. 

This was what you were _supposed_ to do when you were lost. Stay where someone saw you last. Peter wasn’t going to make Mr. Stark or Dr. Strange’s job any harder by following the only friendlies he’d seen off of this planet, no siree. He’d stay put, and he’d wait, and when he’d waited long enough, Mr. Stark would tell him what a good job he did, how he wasn’t being reckless and how he was thinking about others and not putting people in danger-

Peter smothered a sob in his palm. Angry at the break, he forced his mask back in place. His senses immediately, thankfully, dulled. Titan lit up with information through his lenses. Temperature, air flow, elements, materials, matters of interest--Karen marked them all, and, for a moment, Peter was distracted.

He sat under a pillar, eyes darting from identified dangerous item to identified dangerous item. There were animals here, he discovered. Predators and prey, and almost indistinguishable from the surrounding areas. As fascinating as it was, it was also- it was-

Okay, he could be honest here, right? It was just him and Karen. Karen was a bro. She wouldn’t judge him. She wouldn't look down on him for being afraid.

Peter let his head fall back with a dull thud. “Karen, tell me I did the right thing,” he rasped. “Tell me I didn’t make a mistake.”

Karen hesitated. “ _Peter_ ,” she said soothingly. “ _You did the right thing. You didn’t make a mistake._ ” Peter nodded wordlessly, pulling his knees to his chest. “ _Mr. Stark will be here shortly. He will know why you are back, and he will know where to find you._ ”

Peter laughed unsteadily. “Right. Right, of course. If this just happened, Mr. Stark must have just beat Thanos. I have to- I have to give him time. To remember me. _To find me._ I can- I can be patient?”

Karen hesitated again. “ _Yes, Peter._ ”

Peter was nodding relentlessly, bobbing his head over and over, and sliding his gauntleted hand through soft dirt. All Peter had to do was wait. And, in the meantime…

He could go ahead and collect those pieces of the Iron Man suit that Mr. Stark left behind? Boy, wouldn’t he like that! Mr. Stark was probably super pissed that half of his suit got ripped apart by that jerk Thanos. He was probably gunning for the planet right now to protect his invention. 

Peter would be home soon. Mr. Stark wouldn’t leave his suit behind. Probably wouldn’t leave Peter behind either. 

Probably. And if he did, well, May would kill him, if she hadn’t already. 

-

Time passed. The world--the universe--was on the mend.

Vanessa resented it just a little. She never considered herself lucky, certainly not with the kind of luck that followed Domino around. But that didn’t mean she was unaware of how _fortunate_ she had been, really. Being remade wasn’t quite an uncomplicated blessing for everyone. Several hundred thousand died that day. Several million had been injured--maybe more. 

(Sometimes, she sat up at night, thinking about those people who were minding their own business in a plane 18 months ago, only to appear seemingly seconds later with nothing but open air underneath them. She always fucking hated heights.) 

No, Vanessa had been lucky, if she could use that word. Her apartment was, for all intents and purposes, still there. Nothing had changed besides the owner.

It had been her day off. She’d slept in and spent the afternoon idly flipping through various news coverage of the clusterfuck in New York and Wakanda. Then she stepped into her bathroom for a shower.

She procrastinated then, though she couldn’t really remember why. Something to do with the thoughts in her head--playing through the events of the day, maybe? Making a plan for her work later that night? The content didn’t matter so much as where she was at physically, because when she disappeared? She wasn’t in the shower. She was in front of her mirrors. 

Maybe that was the worst part, the body horror bit she couldn’t quite process, even with an immortal fiancé who could regrow entire limbs. She’d been a captive audience for her undoing, watching from three different angles as her fingers, then her arms, then her torso and face fell. Into. Ash. 

(Reforming in the same place seemingly a moment later didn’t really take the edge off.)

But she wasn’t afraid of it. No. She fucking _loathed_ it. She hated that she remembered it at all, that feeling of fading--physically as much as mentally. She hated waking up in a panic, so sure she was disappearing again. She hated being so convinced she was dying, she nearly put her hand through a wall twice trying to convince herself it was real. She hated that she picked at it like an open wound, envying and pitying people who fell asleep and woke up 18 months later with no fucking clue what happened.

But it wasn’t just the fading she was obsessed with. It was the… _after_. The space between being unmade and remade--she could remember that too. Barely, sure, but it was there, lingering and forcing its way to the forefront of her mind when she least expected it.

Vanessa couldn’t explain it to someone even if she tried, so she didn’t. Instead, she _chased_ it, that floaty-tight-nauseated feeling of nonexistence. There was pieces of the experience all over--at the bottom of a liquor bottle, at the top of a roller coaster, during the first drag of a cigarette after swearing off them for who knows how many years.

And now it was in this too. Here, in her bathroom. Splotches of sensations and images assaulted her--spinning colors, blurring world, pressure on her chest. Water swirled over her head like an eddy, one of Wade’s rubber ducks bobbing along for the ride. 

Shifting, she gripped the edge of the tub, squeezing until her joints cried out, trying to stay calm as her chest struggled with the desire to breathe. Her vision was starting to blacken at the edges. Her lungs swelled, burning. 

But still, she waited. It was in places like this that she best remembered the in-between, could best pull up images, sights, sensations. Memories.

She mostly remembered... the gold. It was thick like ink all around them but as light as air. She remembered hands--small, normal, seeking, pulling, wanting. It was… euphoric?

Pockets of air bubbled out of her mouth as she squirmed, eyes clenched tight.

No. No, it wasn’t euphoric. It was _awful_. In that gold inked world, something lurked, the reason why not all of them came back. Her oxygen-deprived mind suddenly threw up a sense memory--feet pounding on gold ground, screaming at her back. Hands pushed, bodies jostled, and above them, it swelled, cold, terrible, and hungry-

_All they could do was run and run and run-_

A pair of hands suddenly slammed on her shoulders, an iron, implacable vice, and before she knew it, Vanessa was being yanked out, up and over the lip of the tub, her nose and eyes burning at the speed of it. Coughing harshly, she barely registering the slosh of water over red leather, or the careful movement of gloved fingers to pull sodden hair away from her mouth.

Being pulled out of the golden world was jarring. It took long seconds for the disorientation to clear her brain, long seconds for her to recognize her shitty bathroom with the three mirrors, long seconds to realize she was naked, wet, and half curled on her favorite mercenary’s lap.

“W-Wade?”

Wade didn’t say anything for a long moment. He had a hand pressed flat on her spine, pushing her up into his torso. His nose was digging in the hair above her left ear. The longer he was quiet, the more she dreaded what he was about to say.

“Don’t go where I can’t follow,” he said finally, his voice jovial. His grip on her belied his tone.

After a beat, Vanessa banged a loose fist against his shoulder tiredly. “Don’t quote Lord of the Rings at me, you nerd.”

God, she could already feel the bruises forming. She shifted uncomfortably, and he adjusted himself accordingly, hands moving to hold rather than to grip, and she found she… missed it. But she missed his eyes more, and he wasn’t looking at her, he wasn’t- 

Wade wasn’t supposed to be back yet, but here he was--kneeling in a centimeter of water. His mouth was pressed in a thin flat line. His mask, half on, was bunched over his nose in a thick fold that couldn’t be comfortable. He wasn’t looking at her still, had his attention trained somewhere on the wall behind her. 

His unusual reticence and silence made Vanessa’s throat go dry. 

“I wasn’t _trying_ to kill myself,” she blurted out. Even as she said it, she was aware of all evidence to the contrary--the whiskey bottle, half drained to soothe her nerves, the barricaded door. The same door was swinging forlornly at an angle, hanging loose by the top bracket.

Wade rubbed a hand soothingly over her thigh. “I know, babe.”

Vanessa let out a harsh noise, hating that he wouldn’t fight her about this--because she _wanted_ to fight. She wanted to scream and yell about it. But Wade accepted what she was doing, and you can’t get worked up and angrily disagree with someone who was being so agreeable.

Except agreeable wasn’t the right word for this, was it?

There was a defeated slouch to Wade’s shoulders. The slow way he rubbed at his face spoke of bone deep exhaustion--and not the physical kind. A chill went over her as she considered what she’d almost did--not just to her and her obsession, but also to him and the future they were trying to build. 

Vanessa sat up, pushing him back. “Wade, I don’t want to have kids yet,” she confessed lowly.

Wade tensed. In the next moment, he relaxed. “Your choice, babe.” 

Vanessa laughed meanly. “Choice? No. _Responsibility_.” She stood on shaky knees, taking in the sight of the bathroom with fresh eyes. God, what had she almost left him to come home to? She wasn’t suicidal. She wasn’t.

But, then again, neither was her mom. “I don’t want to be the kind of fucking parent who leaves her kid to clean up after- after-” She flapped her arm around the room demonstratively. She’d found her own mother, dead for a week, mouth glued to the floor by her own vomit and surrounded by a forest of beer bottles. 

And, god, did she really almost do that to Wade? After hating her mother so much for doing the same? Apple didn’t fall far from that tree, did it? Vanessa crossed her arms tightly under her breasts, nails digging restlessly into the skin above her elbow.

Wade stood with her, finally peeling his mask the rest of the way. “You weren’t trying to kill yourself.”

“Does it fucking matter?” she rasped at him, shoving at his shoulder. What was she doing? God. What the fuck was she doing? What was she chasing? 

Vanessa dug her nails into her scalp for a moment before coming to a decision, nodding once. She pivoted and walked out of the bathroom, sliding past the ruined bathroom door.

Behind her, Wade called out waveringly, “Gonna- gonna put some clothes on, babe?”

Vanessa ignored him, stalking up to the counter. Here was her obsession on display: brochures extolling the wonders of sleep deprivation, listings of doctors facilitating recreational electroconvulsive therapy, groupons for sensory deprivation sessions, bungee jumping, and back alley LSD trips. Her first pack of smokes in ten years sat on top, the broken wrapper still curled loosely around the box. Just under it was a ziploc baggie of the new designer street club drug--allegedly “out of this world.”

Vanessa’s mouth twisted. She swept all of it off the counter in one big motion, hitting the pedal on the trash just in time for the lid to fly up and accept the offering. Then she rooted around in the drawers until she found matches. She lit five of them at once and dropped them in the can.

_Fuck you, and fuck the temptation you represent,_ she thought silently at the flickering flame. Her face was wet. She was trembling still. There was nothing about this that felt good.

And yet... 

She leaned back at the feeling of a forehead pressing against her hair. Wade’s body long and warm against her, and he wasted no time looping a thick arm over her belly. 

“Let me in your head a little,” he whispered.

Vanessa’s mouth pulled up at the corner. “Kinky. Didn’t think you were into lobotomies.” She turned in his arms, sliding her hands over the interestingly textured skin of his neck.

She could only seeing this expression only twice before--once, right after his cancer diagnosis. The other was a random day in November after he literally disappeared before her eyes after murdering a guy with a cream cheese knife. She stood there, stupidly, trying to process the mess in her doorway, when Deadpool stumbled out of the room to her left, flinging off a smoking pocket watch, then his mask.

He’d picked her up, smelling of sauerkraut, ozone, and tar, and he kissed her. He kissed her like they were dying and sharing the last bit of rich asshole’s oxygen tank, and they were about to die like they lived--horny and bitter and salty.

Wade didn’t do serious, but when it did, it was like a gut punch. 

Eyes burning, she laced her fingers with his and pressed them to her chest. “This feeling? It’s going to go away.”

“Oh, repression,” he said with a sigh, fingers curling around hers. “Because that _always_ works.”

“Hey, I am more than what my shitty brain tells me I am.”

Wade quirked a helpless smile at her. “Sounds like our anthem.” He kissed her fingers. Then he winced. “But you, um.” He dipped his head in a boyish way, eyes narrowed apologetically. “You didn’t really think this one through, did you?”

Not understanding, she stared at him wordlessly. Was he really questioning her on his? No, he couldn’t be. But the corner of his mouth was cutting tightly into his scarred cheek, and his eyes were filling slowly with suppressed mirth.

She broke first, unable to ignore the elephant in the room any longer. “It-” She leaned into him, letting out a wheezing laugh. 

“It. Smells. So. So. _Bad._ ” Behind her, the fire had eaten its way through the trashcan, releasing more of that awful smell.

Wade's smile broke into a mega grin. “Like Satan let out a fart after eating 17 Hondas.”

She clutched to his torso, giggling helplessly. She laughed harder when the fire alarm went off and Wade pulled out a gun and unloaded six bullets into it. He hugged her loosely, the arm with the gun draped over her shoulder.

Then there was a banging from their floor--their lower neighbor. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” she called out, wiping the tears of her face. 

Wade stomped back. “Don’t worry,” he yelled cheerfully, “my fiancee is just emerging from her 2007 Britney moment. Go back to your regularly scheduled furry porn.”

She shoved him, mouth stretching in a wide, wide grin. “Ass.” Like she wouldn't look amazing with a buzz cut.

“What? You know that fucker spanks it to Judy Hopps.” He pointed a finger at her face. “Don’t _challenge_ me on this, Vanessa.” 

Meanwhile, the fire spread to the wallpaper. 

Oh well. It sucked anyway.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welp, it jumped to four chapters. You’re disappointed, I’m sure.

Getting Vanessa back was like jumping out of an airplane—except Wade didn’t have a parachute, right? Instead, he had some seven-year old’s limited-edition Hello Kitty backpack. If you did the pros and cons of the situation, the con was definitely the impending splat, no questions there. But what, gentle reader, was the goddamn pro? A beautiful vista, stretching endlessly below in a smear of smog and too many lights? A chance to reflect on one's life and dreams, both attained and forgotten? Or maybe it was the calm that came as one truly started to grasp their infinitesimally small impact on the wider universe.

…

 _Wrong._ The right answer was a mother fucking limited-edition Hello Kitty backpack. Did he mention it was discontinued? One of a kind?

Well.

Vanessa probably wouldn’t like being compared to a backpack. Then again, Vanessa didn’t like a lot nowadays—which was fine. She was allowed to be angry. She was allowed to set her apartment on fire. She was allowed to feel.

Wade would give her damn near anything she wanted, up to and including his own head on a platter. He didn’t think she understood that or the absolute miracle her existence was to him. He didn’t, uh… He didn’t explain it _well_. He didn’t explain that all the torture in the world was worth her walking around again. All the pain. All the nights he stared up at the celling in misery before eating a bullet.

See, Wade might be traumatized by this? Just a little bit. Practically a requirement for any superhero worth his or her salt today.

And it was trauma that probably bothered him the most—oh, but not his own. Hers.

They used to be such a _matching_ pair. Like His and Hers towels, but the towels were their fucked up lives, their childhood issues, and their delightfully morally gray mindsets. But now suddenly, she had a trauma he couldn’t touch and he couldn’t understand, and he was hi-key flipping out about it. Because he knew how to deal with daddy issues (crack jokes and cry about it later), but he had no frigging clue how to approach “got eaten by an infinity stone for 18 months and can’t deal”.

Gosh, here was an intrusive thought: Was this what she felt when he mutated? When his body and abilities radically changed beyond both of their expectations? If so, boy, had she kept that under wraps. Wade wasn’t doing nearly as well. But he tried, and he would keep trying until he croaked.

He bought back her apartment, for starters. He was selfishly glad he’d undid the part of the timeline where he splattered his insides over much of Boston, including the inside of Vanessa’s home. That meant that when he lost her again, he was able to hoard all of Vanessa’s belongings like a motherfucker. And when she came back? He was able to recreate their life together down to the last badly tacked poster.

He also dropped all assignments for about six months, which was… unusual. For him. He was what you might call a _workaholic_. Even in those 18 months of hell, he’d kept up steady stream of funds and unalived marks. There were a surprising number of them converging on the same aliens he was converging on. Like carrion crows, really. It was practically fate. But the lack of assignments helped him focus more on Vanessa. Whether or not she appreciated that was a moving target, most days.

He even… god. He even _read_ entire books about trauma, and things related to it. The perspective wasn’t always wanted, especially when certain sections started sounding pretty damn close to a certain merc of a rouge variety, but it gave him some context, some strategies to help her.

When to back off. When to approach. What to offer. What to not offer. _What not to say_ , which was a big one.

But what none of those books really addressed was this feeling of being utterly… ingenuine around her. No, really. He felt absolutely fucking fake around her sometimes, and the guilt was almost too much to swallow. And Wade was a _champion swallower_.

In his heart of hearts, he knew she could be horrifically depressed or suicidal or crippled or a freaking vegetable, but he would still be nothing less than ecstatic that she was still around. Harboring that daily joy seemed rude on her better days, and downright inconsiderate and shitty on her darkest days.

It seemed fucking awful that he could be so happy when she was so… not.

Oh, if only he had disappeared with her. He would have burned merrily in that hellscape with her. He would be understanding her anger now, and validating it because he felt it too. Instead, any validation he could give her rang hollow.

Vanessa was lost in a way she wouldn’t admit to. Her confidence had been cracked down the middle. Some nights, she would wake up crying and couldn’t remember why, grasping for someone who wasn’t him. It made Wade want to find that Grimace shit head and pump him full of lead, but that was no avenue of closure for either of them.

Thanos was dead, killed by Thor and Iron Man, and it had taken the last of the Avengers months to scramble together enough Asgardian and alien technology to find him. Wade, on the other hand, wasn’t exactly known for having an Infinity Gauntlet or a Norse god in his back pocket.

So, instead, he sat on his hands and tried to support his girl as she pushed past the kind of despair that made him spend an entire movie trying to find a way to successfully kill himself. (She was so much stronger than he was.)

In the end, there was nowhere else he’d rather be, no other universe he’d rather duck into instead. She wasn’t dead on the ground with a hole in her heart. She wasn’t scattered to dust. Instead, she was here. She was frustrated. She was angry.

She was alive.

Wade had dealt with a whole lot less.

-

In his captain’s log, Peter was going to call this day _The Day Peter Quill Screwed Me Over_.

(Side note for Mr. Stark: If Karen would stop censoring his curse words, that would be great. It made it sound like Quill was doing something a lot more inappropriate, which, ew. Quill was okay looking, but his whole persona screamed “sweaty older brother”, and Peter was not about that life.)

Peter’s prevailing thoughts of the Guardians were that they were… interesting? Weird? Nice? But freaking pushy. And apparently prone to sudden and completely unexpected betrayal. Take this day, for example— _The Day Peter Quill Screwed Me Over_.

Or there was also _The Day Quill + Co Abandoned a 17 Year Old on a Hostile Alien Planet_? Right? That wasn’t nice. It had been seven months, Peter was okay with admitting he cried a bit on that day. Dead planets were lonely.

Or there was _The Day Peter Quill + Co Realized No One was Picking Said 17 Year Old Up From a Hostile Alien Planet_? That, um. That was awkward in a different way.

Or _The Day Mantis Tried To Put Me To Sleep._ Very frustrating. It almost worked too.

Or _The Day Drax Tried To Drink Me Under The Table_ , which… alcohol wasn’t great? Why do people drink at all? Stinky stuff, would not recommend. 

Or _The Day Quill Tried To Have an Adult TM Conversation And Threw A Tantrum Instead_ , which Peter recorded for posterity, because screw you very much, Quill.

Or _The Day-_

Oh.

_Oh._

Hm. Now that he lined it up that way, _The Day Peter Quill Screwed Me Over_ was actually entirely expected. Not a surprise at all. Almost foreshadowed, really, which kind of made this whole day his fault. He should have expected it. The Guardians weren’t the kinds of people who let sleeping dogs lie. Peter had known that from almost the beginning of all this.

It had taken the Guardians about a week to remember that Mr. Stark, Dr. Strange, and Peter hadn’t flown to Titan so much as they had crash landed into it with a ship they had stolen from Ebony Maw himself. Toss in some vague memories Quill had about Earth’s crappy and very infant space program, and the Guardians wasted little time hoofing it back to Titan to “save” one Peter Parker.

By that time, two weeks had passed, and Peter had gotten used to being by himself. The Guardians’ attempts were not well received. Quill offered alternatives ranging from dropping him off at someplace more civilized to leaving behind a Guardian to carving out a space on his own ship for Peter until Mr. Stark showed up,

But Peter dug his heels in with the stubbornness of someone who was kind of, sort of aware that some of this situation was his own fault. He didn’t want to leave Titan. He had made A Decision about staying, and he was _fine_.

If anything, he was quite frankly embarrassed that Quill had turned back from burying his friend to try and help him. He’d been competent during that Thanos fight, hadn’t he?

It didn’t help that the more and more Quill pushed him about it, the more and more Peter was determined to prove he was okay. He could hang tight on Titan for as long as Mr. Stark needed. He was smart enough. He was resourceful enough. _He could be trusted._

Of course, it wasn’t… it wasn’t sustainable. Peter was well aware of that. In the last seven months, the weather had stayed mostly constant, but it could certainly get a lot worse and in ways he wasn’t ready to deal with. On top of that, his main coping method—pretending to be a marooned Starfleet officer—had consequences.

Titan was a genuinely _interesting_ planet, and Peter had learned early on how soothing it was to record everything he was seeing and talk through all of his discoveries with Mr. Stark—or a future Mr. Stark, rather. You know, the one who would pick him up any day now? But if he kept doing his captain’s log and taking videos, Karen warned him that he would be out of storage space in three and half years.

What she _didn’t_ say was that he’d be out of suit power in less than one. Karen dealt in finite terms—beginnings and ends, ones and zeros. But the special touch of genius Tony Stark put into everything meant she wasn’t cruel about it. 

But he was fine, damnit. So he resented _The Day Quill Screwed Me Over_. It seemed like an especially big waste of time, seeing that he’d tried showing Quill how capable he was in the past.

All those heart to heart conversations! That tour of his living quarters! That introduction to the tiger-octopus thing that tried to eat him every other day! All for _nothing_. Quill didn’t believe a word he said. 

Peter was okay, and Peter would be okay until Mr. Stark landed on Titan to take him home. He promised himself he would be, and Peter didn’t make a habit of breaking promises.

Anyway. Before _The Day Quill Screwed Me Over_ , the contact between the Guardians and Peter had soured enough that Peter stopped meeting them when they dropped off their weekly supplies. On his angrier days, he considered ignoring the supplies entirely, but they’d started including this mushy chocolate-y, pomegranate-y oatmeal thing that he was absolutely weak for. There was never going to be a time where he was angry enough at the last Day of Betrayal to say no to that.

But that particular day—the last of such Days, he would figure out—was a good day. Peter was even consider breaking their stalemate a bit and saying hi. He stroked his jaw, considering it. On his last good day, he’d had a thin dusting of patchy stubble. They hadn’t noticed, But he’d grown it out since, and he kind of wanted Quill’s opinion on it. Every time the guy sneezed, he developed a 5 o’clock shadow. It wasn’t fair. Peter wanted some tips or maybe a compliment or two. Or maybe just a razor. Beards were itchy.

So Peter darted through the ruins of Titan towards the descending ship. Without Karen’s HUD, it was more dicey than it should have been, but he’d been here long enough that he could read the signs of Titan’s endlessly collapsing infrastructure like a child’s comic book. Avoiding weak points, he crawled high enough on one colossal superstructure to spy on the parked ship from afar.

As usual, Quill’s vessel did not inspire confidence. The outer hull was dinged up and littered with chipping paint. The machine hissed, spitting up superheated air between the outer plates. The lights were still on too, flickering like a dying florescent bulb in a truck stop in the middle of nowhere.

Peter was dying to stick his hand in the motor and start poking around, start learning what exactly it was in Quill’s trash heap of a ship that made it space worthy, but that would probably require a concession he wasn’t willing to make.

The main ship door hitched once, shuddering, before finally sliding open. An unfamiliar woman came out.

Peter cocked his head to the side, leaning forward to squint at her better. She had long black hair with red highlights, and she was looking over the landscape with cool, tight lipped appraisal. The fact that she was _green_ registered as almost an afterthought. He was more focused on her stance—shoulders’ width apart and steady, almost at parade’s rest—and her hands—clasped around an innocuous staff. 

She just stood there, waiting for… something. Wind tossed the flaps of her long leather jacket to the left as she stared steadily at fixed point twenty feet to Peter’s left.

Then Peter’s arm hair stood on end. He yelped and leapt backwards without thinking, shooting in the air just in time to see Quill crash feet first where he just was.

Quill recovered quickly, the red eyes of his helmet flaring. “Your time’s up, Pete!” He was handling a hefty looking gun in both hands, and not looking very friendly about it.

Alarmed, Peter took advantage of the weird gravity on the planet, and _dove_.

Quill shot out a hand in his direction. "Don't you fucking dare-"

Much to Quill's dismay, Peter slipped through a crack of the fallen building, the musty, dark, cold air a jolting contrast to the late afternoon sun of Titan. After free falling for a few seconds, he blindly landed in a smooth roll on the closest flat surface. and tucked himself under crumbling overhang.

Hidden, he cautiously peered up at Quill, his eyesight rapidly adjusted to the darkness. This almost immediately helped when Quill stuck his masked face in the hole, obscuring the light.

Quill had never gone after him this hard. He usually poked, bothered, pestered. He didn’t fly after Peter in his jet boots, armed with a giant potato launcher of a gun. What had Peter done this time to get so much of Quill’s attention? Did somebody know about him this far away from home? Was there a bounty on his head? Please say there wasn't a bounty. That would be unfair.

Peter ducked lower, hiding behind a smooth marble-like wall, his hand sliding against it as he inched further away from Quill.

Quill was having some difficulties. Dust and debris rained from above where he was forcing the hole to widen. When it was big enough, he dropped in, falling at a controlled descent. 

Peter crouched, staying in place. Aw, man. If he had his webs, this would be over in a minute. He’d been out of them for months, _and Quill knew it._

Meanwhile, Quill was sweeping the dark corners of the cavernous space with the tip of his potato gun. “Make this easy on us, Pete,” he called out, looking the wrong way.

 _Us._ Damn it. Where were the others?

Quill’s back was almost to him now as he scrutinized the wrong shadows. “I’m not leaving you on this damn planet any longer.” Then he suddenly shifted his gun to point right at Peter’s hiding spot. He squeezed the trigger.

A jet-propelled net shot through the air, barreling to Peter’s hiding spot. Peter jumped straight up to avoid it, plastering himself against a low ceiling.

Under his fingers, he felt an opportunity. He dug in, yanking out a chunk of masonry and threw it at Quill’s left boot, forcing him to spin in mid-air.

“Leave me alone!” Peter yelled, dropping back to the floor—or a floor, at least. The building went much deeper.

Huh. There was an idea.

He went to the edge of the broken floor and dropped to the next lowest one. Then he did it again, and again, and again. By the time Quill had control of his jet boots, Peter was five floors deeper and sliding once more through a crack in the building’s walls.

When Quill saw what he was doing, he immediately called foul. “Oh, come on, dude. Seriously? _You’re so small!_ ”

It was even darker down here—fewer cracks to let in fading light. There was only one, low and flat against the ground, but it led straight outside. If he wanted to get out of there, he would have to crawl on his stomach to do so.

He jogged over to it, feeling better about having such a solid escape plan. Pat on the back—go Peter.

And, man, what did Quill know anyway? Peter was doing fine, okay? Just goddamn fine. Sure, it was lonely at night, and he suffered from some bad tummy aches when he ran into food he couldn’t eat. (The weekly supply drop helped more than they knew.) And, sure, Karen’s voice had stopped working 5 months in, her voice getting fainter and fainter until they had to start using pulsing lights to communicate without words.

And, yeah, _maybe_ Peter stopped genuinely expecting Mr. Stark to show up about a month in to his time on Titan. Maybe he… Maybe he gave up a little on ever seeing Earth again. Or May. Or Ned.

_But he was fine._

Chewing on his lips behind his mask, Peter dropped to his hands and knees. Once in front of his escape route, he peered into the dusky, dull orange light. The crack was bigger than he thought. Wide enough even for an Iron Man suit.

And the dirt in front of it had already been disturbed.

His lenses pulsed _red_.

Peter sprang to his feet, making eye contact with an almost insultingly bored Drax looming in the dark. Cracking his knuckles, Drax narrowed his oddly pale eyes at Peter. He yawned hugely before swinging at Peter’s head.

Crouching under it, Peter kicked the back of the large alien’s knee with more force than warranted, forcing him to stagger. Spinning in place, Peter used his second assailant’s momentum to propel her up and at Drax.

Drax caught Mantis with a resigned sigh, like maybe next time he wouldn’t. They fell together in a messy pile on the ground.

Peter skipped back several feet, reassessing. “It’s been nice seeing you again—Mantis, love the haircut. Drax, did you finally get around to washing your pants? Good on you! We’ll make a reasonable adult out of you yet!”

Drax let out something that sounded suspiciously like a snore.

Mantis was almost his polar opposite—frantically awake and concerned. She planted her palm in Drax’s face, pushing herself up with it. “Peter, please-” she implored.

Peter backed away with his hands held up. “No can do. This is, what? The fifth attempt you guys have made to kidnap me? Get a new playbook.”

But the thing is, _they did_. Peter was weirdly okay with their inept attempts to trick him back to Quill’s ship. It was kind of cute, in a ham-fisted way. Like a child trying to hide their theft of the last cookie while it was still grasped in their sticky little hand.

Peter wasn’t ready for _this_ particular playbook. He hadn’t fought anyone in months, and the sudden violence was very rattling on his nerves.

Behind him, he could hear Quill’s voice, echoing louder in the chamber as he moved closer.

Peter shook his head sharply. He was going to hide. Deeper, if he had to. Even if it fell on him like he always feared it would.

But he didn’t get a chance to take even one more step.

“Enough,” growled someone in his ear. His senses _screamed_.

He ducked without thinking, arm coming up in time to block the second swing that would have broken a rib. He spun around. Then a boot caught him in the sternum, sending him back hard enough to impact a wall. Dirt rained on him, blinding his lenses long enough to let the new enemy in close enough to push a stick (no, a _staff_ ) hard against his barely armored throat.

He pushed back against it immediately, getting it away from him.

This was a mistake. The combatant used his grip on the staff to yank him away from the wall. Then the staff twisted out of his grip, slamming him twice in the legs and once in the chest before it whipped around, catching him behind his calves.

Peter hit the ground hard. Then, it was done.

Winded and taken aback by this development, Peter nevertheless learning a thing or two—several of them, in fact.

One, the stranger Guardian he’d spied on before was very fast and very pretty this close up. She had nice boots too. Heavy. Shiny. Mostly heavy, though, especially where one had planted itself on his stomach. He wasn't about to move unless she let him.

Two, the staff he’d thought was so innocuous before had a wicked sharp edge at one end. It was currently resting just under his chin. If he swallowed too hard, he was going to slit his own throat.

Three, he didn’t think he’d ever been beaten this fast. He’d like to have his slice of humble pie, please. You know, if she’d let him. (It was okay if she didn’t. She was clearly the boss here.)

It was this tableau that Quill eventually stumbled into—quite literally. He almost ate it half way to them, so quickly did he approach the stranger, hand outstretched. “Gamora, don’t hurt him!”

Gamora. Peter gazed up at her in awe. One of the ex-Children of Thanos. Rebel, savior, sacrifice. One of the original Guardians of the Galaxy. Peter always wondered what Gamora was like that Quill had been willing to risk half of the universe to punish the man who murdered her.

“You were wasting our time,” Gamora was saying. There was an edge of defensiveness to her words. “Were none of you actually serious about catching him?”

Quill shrugged defensively in response. Casually, he reached into his jacket and activated a light, snapping it and dropping the glow-stick-ish tech to the floor. By the way that both Gamora and Mantis blinked, Peter could tell he wasn’t the only one mildly blinded by bright purple glow. Whatever alien species made up Quill’s other half, it wasn’t one with night vision.

“Not really,” Drax drawled. He was still spread eagle on the floor. He itched his pec, looking drowsy.

Mantis was clasping her hands together worriedly. “He’s not a mission, Gamora!”

“Isn’t he, though?” At her team’s silence, Gamora sneered. “You all wanted to retrieve him. That makes him a _mission_ ” Peter tried not to visibly wince when the boot on his chest got a little heavier. “You were _so_ focused on the fact that he was a child that you forget he also went _toe to toe_ with my father, and lived. How many people have managed that? Tell me." Gamora's voice was raw. "Because I didn't.” 

No one seemed to know how to respond to that, so they didn't.

Still flat on the ground, Peter grimaced. This was… super awkward. He let the mask fall. His eyes adjusted better to the light without the lens. He cleared his throat, swinging his gaze over to the lesser of evils. “So. Congrats on finding that Soul Stone planet, Quill.”

Quill disengaged his own helmet. “We didn’t find it,” he admitted quietly. “She found us first.”

Peter nodded—well, nodded as much as the blade would let him before barreling on into the conversation. He looked up at Gamora and did a stupid little wave about hip level. “Gamora, nice to meet you. I’ve heard lots. I’m Peter—well, a different Peter. It’s complicated.” He lifted the same hand he used to wave to gesture between himself and Quill. “I’m, um. What do you call it… Guardian-adjacent? Friends of Guardians? A _friendly_?” When Gamora swung her intense gaze back down to him, Peter quailed slightly. He turned his face, muttering to Quill, “Right? We’re friends?”

Quill sighed, rubbing a hand over his mouth. “Yeah, Pete. Friends.”

“So…” Peter said leadingly, jerking his gaze back to Gamora. He made a rolling gesture with his wrist. “Any chance any of that come with less pointy bits?”

She shot him a toothy smile that was warm and yet not entirely amicable. “None.”

“Okay,” Peter breathed, deflating. He could be patient.

Besides, he needed to reassess. Gather some more information, maybe. Because the Guardians were different now. Even he could see that. His lasting impression of them was a big idiot kid leading other idiot kids, and everyone was armed with weapons. But something that visibly and actively changed with Gamora's return. Peter couldn’t put his finger on it, but it was like something structured had slipped back into place, something that brimmed with vitality and confidence.

Peter blinked rapidly as it all slotted together. Well, damn. That was it, wasn’t it? The Guardians had gotten their morale back.

He almost immediately sagged, dropping into a foul mood. Well. Wasn’t that just swell for them.

While Peter scrutinized the group suspiciously, Quill had dropped to one knee next to him.

“Hi Quill,” Peter said tiredly.

“Hi Pete,” Quill returned. His smile was small, but not smug and not unkind. “We have a proposition for you.”

Peter sighed. “One that involves me leaving the planet?” he guessed.

Quill flapped a hand. “Eh, that’s just a… happy coincidence.” He quirked a wider smile at that.

“Why would it be coincidence?” Drax was whispering in the background. Sitting up, he pointed an accusing finger at Quill. “You just said this whole thing was a plot to get him back to Earth. A _plot_ , Quill.”

Quill looked up at the ceiling, like he’d find extra patience there. “I know what I said. Ixnay on the strategy-ay, okay?”

Peter raised a finger. “It’s, uh, ategystray, actually.”

Quill glared down at him. “Do not encourage him,” he said in an undertone. He cocked his head, considering Peter. “By the way, were you bullied in school? You seem the type.”

Behind him, Drax was crossing his arms with a scowl. “A plot is _not_ coincidence,” he said to Mantis in a stage whisper.

Above Peter, Gamora rolled her eyes.

“Here’s the situation,” Quill said briskly, cutting through all the chatter. “We need to collect some of our members. Groot and Rocket. They split from us to follow Thor, and we know Thor was trying to get back to Midgard. _Earth_."

“It’s been over two years since then, and they’re not back,” Gamora shared, eyes steady on Peter’s face.

“Which is weird!” Quill said earnestly. “Rocket catches ants in his pants if he's in one place for two long. It's a character flaw, really. So, instead, we’re thinking they must be under guard or something by someone on Earth.” After a beat, he shrugged. “Maybe.”

“We’re not sure what your planet is like, especially after an invasion by Thanos,” Gamora said grimly. “They may not be open to negotiation, especially not to outsiders.”

“We’ve had many governments try and fail to kill us,” Drax said with pride.

“We’d rather avoid that,” Mantis chirped in a sing-songy voice, smiling.

“But if we had you,” Quill interjected quickly, dragging Peter’s attention back to him, “we could make a trade.”

“Bad trade, if you ask me,” Drax muttered. He reeled back when Mantis leveled an angry stare at him. “What? A talking raccoon and a walking tree? I wouldn’t make trade.” He leaned closer to Mantis, as if sharing a secret. “Boys are _not_ rare. I'm sorry I have to tell you this.” Mantis swelled like a bull frog.

“But you’re an _Avenger_ ,” Quill said loudly, “which means there’s someone out there, oh, like the other Avengers, who will vouch for your value. Right?”

Peter stayed silent. Most Avengers didn’t know he'd joined them. Only Mr. Stark. And if Mr. Stark hadn’t found a way to get to him by now, was Mr. Stark even alive?

Faced with that horrible thought, Peter looked up at Gamora. “Your friends are on Earth. How do you know that they’re even-” He squashed the rest of his question, realizing how out of line it was. Especially here and now, on this graveyard of a planet to a woman who should have been very, very dead.

But Gamora heard the part of the question he didn’t have the heart to say. “We don’t,” she responded quietly. “But they’re our friends, so we hope and try anyway.”

That resonated strongly with Peter, more strongly than anything the Guardians had brought to him before. Heat flooded his eyes. He pretended it was the dust.

He tried stalling, but he had already made another Decision.

“Fine. _Fine._ I’ll come with you. But only so you can use me as a bargaining chip.” Peter froze and blinked up at her. “Wow, that sounded better in my head.”

Gamora smiled, and removed her foot and staff. "Then welcome to the Guardians. However long we have you, that is." Next to her, Quill jumped up to his feet. He clapped his hands, grinning.

“Great!” he said. “Let’s get out of here.”

Drax balked at that. “What? Already? Peter Parker promised me last time to show me the tiger-octopus.” He clutched his hand in a fist in front of his wide chest. “I must best this creature.”

Regardless of this solemn oath, Drax allowed Gamora to drag him by the arm to the small crack in the wall. She pushed him through first, shoving harder when he got stuck.

Meanwhile, Peter stood, smoothing a hand over his throat with paranoid attention. This meant he was still enough for Mantis to hop over and encircle him in a tight squeeze of a hug that he could feel even through his suit.

A beat later, she held him at arm’s length, her liquid black eyes darting all over his face. “I used to dream of you dying in a puddle of your own blood under much rubble,” she said sweetly.

Peter could feel his face blanching. “I- what?”

Mantis giggled at him, like he was funny, and skipped after Gamora without really explaining anything.

Instead, Quill’s hand settled heavy on his shoulder. “What she means is she’s been trying to get you to come with us since day 1. Has been an outright nag about it, really. Wouldn’t stop talking about you.” Quill glanced at him under furrowed eyebrows, face twisted in a complicated expression.

It was the closest Peter was going to get to an apology. He felt better about it, nevertheless.

As they approached the escape route, Peter changed the subject. “So. Gamora.”

“Yup.”

Peter dropped to his stomach, army crawling his way outside. “She’s, um- wow. Just. Wow.”

“Yup,” Quill commented behind him, voice strained. “Wow is the adjective. Let's keep it that way.”

Once they were outside, Peter rolled to the left and out of the way. He offered a hand to Quill as he emerged not long after him, dusty and dirty, blinking into the sun with a grouchy frown. They stood together, patting themselves down uselessly. Titan's dirt clung like wet clay without the moisture. The other Guardians were yards ahead, just as dusty. They already embroiled in a different argument, but Quill didn’t seem to mind lingering with Peter, hovering over him like...

Yeah. Like an older bother. Peter liked it. “Oh, Quill, I’ve been meaning to ask you.” He spread out his arms, jutting out his chin. “What do you think?”

Quill’s eyes narrowed at him. “Of what?”

“My- my beard?”

“Oh, that’s a beard?” Quill squinted at him even more. “You sure?” With that, he shook his head once and ambled after his team.

Peter stared after him in disbelief. “…I hate you so much.”

Nevertheless, he followed, hoping he was making the right decision here. He really didn’t not want to know what Gamora would do to him if he changed his mind now. He and Karen weren't in the mood for another fight right now. Besides, Peter could use some of the Guardians' new morale for himself.

-

The cupboard slammed shut under Vanessa’s hand, sharp and loud like another entry into the argument brewing in her apartment.

In contrast, Wade’s voice was quiet. “You need to talk to somebody, Ness.”

“Like who?” Vanessa argued thoughtlessly. “You?” She tensed. She didn’t turn around. She didn’t want to see his face. She hated fighting with Wade. It was gross and ugly, and they had all the ammunition in the world to hurt each other. They weren’t always the best at only firing blanks.

Wade was being patient with her. She wanted to rise to his level and match him. But sometimes… she just wanted to break things.

Wade was trying so, so hard to be gentle, but they weren’t gentle people.

“Just… someone,” Wade was saying slowly. “Someone who can understand. Someone who gets your perspective.” Then, quietly, he muttered, “Someone who isn’t me.”

Vanessa smiled thinly at the wall. Nodding once to herself, she strode left until she hit her purse. She jerked it over her shoulder. “I’m going out. Don’t wait up.”

There was a sliding scrape, like he'd tripped into the table going after her. “Vanessa!”

She didn’t look back at him. If she looked back at him, she was going to start crying. So Vanessa shut the front door behind her and took the stairs instead of the elevator. She needed the exertion, the expended energy, the place to put her anger that wasn't at the man she loved. By the time she was at street level, she was panting, tired, and calmer.

Vanessa wasn't mad at Wade.

Okay, yeah, she was mad at him. But it was so stupid, she was almost madder at her self. You see, the main issue between them was that they didn’t talk about these kinds of things. They didn’t get serious. Not even about serious things. Wade went through months of horrific torture, but it was _Ajax_ who had told her about it. Not Wade. No, Wade deflected it with a joke and never brought it up again.

And now he wanted her to talk? To share her feelings? What the absolute _fuck_.

Vanessa smeared a hand over her face before walking out to the street, hailing a taxi. She rattled off an address and leaned back in the back seat, staring blankly out the window.

He wanted her to talk. Fine. But she was, and she was failing so fucking badly at it. Vanessa had picked up a therapist after the whole almost suicide attempt thing. If Wade knew, he'd probably be happier with her. But he didn't, and, even now, she still didn’t want to tell him. Maybe she would, once she reached a healing point, but she couldn’t at this moment. Not when it wasn’t going very well.

Her therapist said she had PTSD, like the diagnosis would empower her instead of disgust her. But PTSD was for people who had actually been through real shit, not for assholes like her who disappeared for all of five seconds and got obsessed over it. It wasn’t _right_. She hated it. The diagnosis left her stomach feeling like it had been hollowed out like a pumpkin.

And if she told Wade _of all people_ about it… god. What a shit show.

The taxi stopped at the corner. She tossed him the payment and stepped out, walking the long route to Sister Margaret’s. Not her best choice, considering her options. Accordingly, the rest of the night was a long blur. She wasn’t twenty anymore, so she resented the idea that she could become blackout drunk. And yet, she was drunk. And she certainly blacked out. After her fifth shot of vodka, Weasel moved her to the backroom with a variety of liquor bottles, then closed the door behind her.

Vanessa was probably bad for business. _Mom, look at me now._

When she woke up the next morning, she wasn't dead, no matter what her pounding head was telling her. She was curled in a tight ball on a dusty chair. She wanted, desperately, to be home, but she was still there, in Weasel’s shithole of a bar. She sat up, combing a hand self-consciously through her hair. She was half-way through a decision to sleep for another hour when Dopinder stuck his curly little head through the doorway.

“Breakfast, Mrs. Pool?” he said hopefully. He was wielding a soggy, eggy spatula.

He sat with her at the empty bar, which was cute. The rest of the establishment was empty and smelled faintly like beer and piss. It was silent, save for the faint buzz of shitty lightbulbs and the soft strains of music from a neighbor. Her eggs and toast were served with a screwdriver and a bottle of aspirin—breakfast of champions.

Dopinder was quiet and fiddly, but, most importantly, still where it mattered for her hungover brain. Then, suddenly, he was springing up from his stool, quick enough that Vanessa developed secondhand queasiness and had to lay her head on the counter. “I have something for you!”

“You’ve already gone above and beyond,” she croaked, clasping a hand over her mouth. Then she paused when he brandished a set of clean, familiar clothes in her direction. She sat up straight, pointing a finger at him. “Okay, this went from cute to creepy.”

Dopinder froze, his eyes going very, very round. “I am very, very sorry,” he whispered.

Vanessa leveled a hard stare at him. Then she lifted a shoulder, uncaring. “Forget it. The creep factor is not in your court.” Draining the rest of her screwdriver, she snatched the clothes from his loose grip, finding her way back to her impromptu bed to change in privacy.

When she came back to her toast and eggs, Dopinder was frantically texting. She slid back into her seat and leaned against his arm. “How the hell did you deal with all of this disappearing shit, Dopinder? You’re still so chipper.”

“I do not remember disappearing as well as you do, Mrs. Pool. I was asleep.”

Of course Dopinder would be one of the lucky ones. Vanessa sighed, defeated. “It’s okay.” She folded up the piece of toast in front of her and chewed on the corner of it, her stomach rebelling. Then she remembered the guy lived alone. “What happened when you came back? You must have had _some_ issues then.”

Dopinder nodded rapidly in agreement. His gaze went distant. “My landlord threw all of my belongings in the trash and put my apartment back on the market within a week of my leaving.”

“Oh, sweetie.” She rubbed his shoulder.

Dopinder smiled faintly. “When I came back, though, I woke up in bed next to a beautiful stranger. He was very kind to me and explained what happened.” Dopinder’s face fell. “Gita was not so understanding. She did not wait for me.” He reached into his pocket, pulling out his phone. After swiping through it for a moment, he turned the screen around to face her. “I am so very fortunate that Omar, my beautiful stranger, has supported me in this. Much like you and Mr. Pool!”

On the phone was a picture of tiny and cute Dopinder next to a very built, very beautiful young man with perfectly coiffed black hair and smooth dark skin. He had a possessive hand on one of Dopinder’s shoulders. He was also inexplicably shirtless.

Wade was right: Dopinder’s love life was ridiculous.

“I’m sorry about Gita, honey.” 

“Yes. Gita continues to reject me. I do not know how to show her that my love is true.” Despite those words, Dopinder beamed suddenly. He put away his phone and pulled out his wallet instead. It was battered and thin around the edges. He pulled out a folded neon orange flyer. “But! But she did give me this. Her mother’s friend’s brother’s auntie went, and it was very helpful!”

Vanessa reluctantly took it. This—like the clothes, breakfast, and attention—stank of an intervention. “…Thanks.”

She unfolded it, eyes scanning quickly over the bolded text. It was bluntly stated—if you were someone who had disappeared during the Infinity Affair, you were welcome to join a group of like-minded people every week for a picnic in the park. Simple. Easy. Low stress. On top of that, the next picnic was in mere hours. Convenient.

Vanessa was starting to doubt Gita had a mother whose friend’s brother’s auntie attended such a thing. Dopinder met her gaze, visibly sweating. She leaned forward, mouth opening to poke holes in the story.

Then there was a clatter behind the bar.

“Are you ladies done gossiping?” Weasel sat up, half of his hair standing straight up. His glasses were askew over his nose and there was drool caked over one cheek. He had half of blanket clutched to his stomach like it would protect him.

At their looks, he glared. “What? I got evicted. Fucking sue me.” He stood with a groan, a hand flying to his lower back.

Dopinder put on his best assertive face. “Mr. Weasel, we were not gossiping," he scolded. He glanced at Vanessa, then back at Wade. "We were discussing Very Serious Matters.” Vanessa's eyebrows winged up. Some of those sounded capitalized.

“Whatever.”

Dopinder scowled. Then he shook himself out of it, like he was reminding himself of his lines. “Mr. Weasel, how did _you_ cope with disappearing?” Interested, despite herself, Vanessa propped her chin up on her hands.

“Weed, my small friend. Before, during, after. Thought it was part of the trip.” Weasel cracked his spine with a wince before leveling a dull stare at Vanessa. “You done with your pity party yet, Princess?”

Behind her, Dopinder was making cutting gestures at his neck. Vanessa smiled beautifully. “Choke on a dick, Weasel.”

“Wow, see if I let you and your potty mouth in my bar ever again.” Despite the words, he hobbled around the bar just long enough to give her a one-armed hug. She kissed his cheek and slipped a fifty in the tip jar.

Her nose wrinkled as she pulled away. “Take a shower, Weasel.”

“Take a _hike_ , Vanessa,” Weasel fired back. “And call him so he stops calling me, please. And Dopinder, mop up the floor behind the bar! If it’s not clean enough for a man to sleep on, I’ll fire you.”

“What? You fired me last night!”

“I’ll fire you again.” Weasel leaned over the bar, groaning. “Goddamn, sleeping on floors is a young man’s sport. Dopinder, let me sleep at your place.”

Vanessa slipped out of the bar just as Dopinder started protesting something about discretion and maintaining a work-life balance. It spun into an argument about wages and certain unethical bartenders not appreciating the unsung hero in their midst. Glass crashed in the background.

"Baby, come back," Weasel rasped. "I'll do right by you. Just... just fucking mop so I don't have to, Jesus Christ."

Rolling her eyes, Vanessa walked away from the bar. The closer and closer she got to the street, though, the more drained she felt. Still, she kept walking. One foot in front of the other, and not much more to it. She felt like a zombie walking across an apocalyptic wasteland on broken legs, directionless and vaguely hungry. It wasn’t just the hangover. Vanessa’d felt like this for months. Alcohol helped. So did sleep and hobbies. Distractions. People helped the most.

Weary, she glanced at her phone. She had 15% battery left, and it was only 11:00am. She also had 15 texts and 42 missed phone calls. Very restrained, for Wade.

Making a decision, Vanessa made a left and started walking down the street away from the bar, musing on how to approach this. Then, as she crossed a crosswalk, she thought _fuck it_. She called him back.

It rang a few times, enough to make her heart beat double time with nerves, but then he answered with a distracted greeting.

She ignored it. “So Dopinder has a new boyfriend.”

Wade sucked in a breath, as if he hadn’t expected her to be on the other end. Then, in a brighter tone, he said, “The Egyptian Instagram model? Beautiful, am I right?”

Vanessa frowned, stepping around a slow dogwalker and her peppy Pomeranian. “How do you know he’s Egyptian?”

“I know everything about him. Name, age, address, birthstone, political beliefs”—here, his voice darkened—“deepest childhood traumas.”

She laughed, feeling like something dark and cloying had just dislodged itself from her chest. “Let me guess. You’ve had so much free time on your hands, you created a whole dossier on the guy.”

“All the better to murder him with, my sweet.” If he stepped out of line, went unsaid. Wade was protective of Dopinder. “Besides, I’m not, like, that bored. I mean, yes to the dossier, you know me so well, but I _am_ out of the apartment. Getting some sun, chatting with some folks. Networking, the yoozh.” There was a suspicious crunch and a muted scream on his end. “You know, even though _I’m_ not taking any markers right now doesn’t mean others aren’t taking markers on _me_.”

Even though he couldn't see it, Vanessa mimed an exaggerated taken aback face. “How rude!”

“Right?” Wade enthused. There was a long stretch of yelling that petered off towards the end, like someone had fallen from a long height. Then Wade was saying, “And my branding, my gosh. I’ve worked so hard on it. My motto is literally ‘cannot be killed’. And these _shit bag mother fuckers_ ”—there was a wet noise in the background and a muffled voice—“take it as a challenge instead of what it is. A statement of fact. _Bye, Felicia._ ”

The screaming in the background in the background ended suddenly amidst three gun shots.

“You poor baby,” Vanessa drawled. She was grinning in the sunlight.

“I get by,” Wade said breezily. “So what’s new with you, Scooby Doo?”

Pain clutched at her for a second, all of her own making. Vanessa slowly shook her head. “I’m an asshole. And I love you.”

“Composing your marriage vows? I hafta say, they’re sounding suspiciously close to mine.”

"Wade."

"If there's one thing I won't tolerate in this relationship, it's a copycat-"

“Seriously,” she cut in. “I love you. And I’m an asshole. And I know how lucky I am to have you.”

There was a long pause on the other end. Then Wade sighed.

“Hon, are you coming home soon? Because, if you are, I can be back home in an hour.” There was a choked off yelp that was actually 100% Wade this time. Strained, he said, “Scratch that, 30 minutes. Livers grow back, right?”

“Don’t rush on my account. I’m not going to be back home until dinner.” Then, swallowing, she said, “I’m gonna… I’m gonna talk to someone. Like you want me to.” Someone else, at least. Her therapist could take a hike. PTSD, psh…

“I’m not twisting your arm.”

Vanessa cocked her head to the side. “Aren’t you?” She gave him a moment to sputter before continuing. “Pointing Dopinder at me like that… that’s dirty pool, and you know it.”

Instead of challenging that statement, Wade wished her good luck, gently and sweetly, like he knew what band aids she had to yank off to make this work.

Then he said, "Better to start with a social group now if you're going to go ahead and miss another appointment with your therapist."

Vanessa froze. She froze so long, she missed her chance to cross the street. Cars honked at her and other pedestrians stared. Unfreezing, she hung left, walking like she'd meant to stay on that block after all. Her heart took off like a drum, pounding and rattling so loud, she could barely hear herself think.

Or speak. "I can't believe I forgot what a shitty person you are with other people's secrets." Vanessa quickly shifted her phone from one hand to another, swiping her sweaty palm over her shirt. Her next questions came out bitter, rapid-fire. "You steal his notes too? You know what he thinks I have?"

Wade hesitated for a moment before finally speaking. "A wise woman once told me that she was more than what her shitty brain told her she was. Something to consider once in a while, don't you think?" There was a smile in his voice. "Bye, sweetheart."


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the delay. It was for a good cause. There was a section in here that needed to be deleted and rewritten. Also, I am working on a Spideypool Big Bang fic! It’s very plotty.

“Fucking go give the spooks a visit already.” Without the posters on the wall or the rugs on the floor, Weasel’s hoarse reedy voice echoed through the apartment, amplified by the speaker on Wade’s cell phone. 

Wade himself was on the floor, surrounded by a sea of boxes. Armed with a tape dispenser, he idly pulled a length of packing tape from its maw with a long shriek. He paused. Hm. He clipped the edge of the tape on the jagged teeth, then pulled another one. And another one. And another one.

_Shreek_ snip _shreek_ snip _shreek_ -

A knife struck the box near his knee, quivering with the force of the throw. Wade cocked his head, eyeing it.

“The fuck was that?” Weasel demanded.

“Nothing,” Wade sung cheerfully. Dropping the dispenser, he thrust a thumb in the air—message received. “Continue!” Metal slipped back into wood with an almost sulky grumble.

Flipping a sharpie in his hand, Wade hemmed and hawed in all the right places as Weasel proceeded to detail the current chapter of his sad sack of a life novel. It didn’t matter—Wade was in charge of labeling boxes. And he was going to be the best labeler there ever was. And not a lame one either. Who named the box with their kitchen appliances ‘kitchen’? Ugh, gross. No, this was God Tier packing. He was going full minimalist… but with maximum creativity.

…

So yeah, he was basically using this as an excuse to draw dicks all over the boxes. So what? It was a helpful categorization! Erect meant this box should be prioritized in the new apartment. Given some love, some one-on-one attention. Gripped with both hands and worked with for a while. _Mm, yeah._

But if it was flaccid? Eh, pack it up and store it a while. It would keep.

The sparkles were just for fun. 

“I need this, Wade,” Weasel was saying. Blah, blah, blah. “All of my old contacts think I’m a narc now.” Wade made an agreeable noise. “I just barely got Sister Margaret’s back. But the spook will pay me if you just go chat with him. That’s it. That's all you need to do. This tiny little favor could be the difference between me getting back in the game and me waking up in bed with a horse’s head between my sheets.”

Wade clucked his tone in disapproval, sighing. “I really wish you wouldn’t talk like that about your side chick.”

“Yeah,” Vanessa said from the kitchen. “Cindy’s a real doll.” 

After a beat, they both started snickering. 

“Fuck you very much too, Vanessa,” Weasel drawled. “And Wade, stop naming the blowup dolls you get me every Christmas! It’s disconcerting.”

“But you still want them. Check!” Ah, Wade loved it when his friends made holiday shopping easy.

“Wade-” Weasel made a disgusted noise, then tried again, stronger and sterner than before. “Wade, I have picked you off the ground so many fucking times-” 

Wade put a hole through the box. He hurled himself to his feet, advancing on the phone. “You spineless fuckwad,” Wade spat. “You spy on me for Xavier. You sold me out to Cable. You sent the IRS my contact information—my _contact_ information, Weasel! You know I never give that shit out!”

“Except to every truck stop bathroom on every major road in North America,” Vanessa muttered, engrossed in her own box.

“I am the definition of a good time, Nessa!” Remembering the real person he was angry at, Wade whirled back to the phone. “And you! Just last week, you told Smokes I offed her girlfriend when Janey was just out of town to visit her family.”

“Okay, the last one? I’m real sorry. Smokes is packing a lot of knives, and she looms like a motherfucker. I panicked and threw you under the bus. My bad.” Weasel paused a moment. “The other stuff, though, I’m not sorry about. Help me out anyway.” 

Mollified by the small concession, Wade grumbled wordlessly. He restlessly paced back and forth in front of the phone. Torn was he. To help a douchebag, or to not help a douchebag? That was the question. 

Feeling her attention suddenly, he looked up at Vanessa. She was sitting cross-legged on the bare counter, a half-filled box next to her. She was wearing one of his t-shirts and nothing else, and she made the absolute prettiest picture. Knife throwing and snarky comments aside. He went to her, a moth to a sexy, sexy flame.

When she made eye contact with him, eyebrows popping up questioningly, he felt smothered by the weight of all he could lose here. When he spoke again, his voice was thicker, darker, and lower. “The last time I followed a suspicious contact from your establishment, I became a contestant for Chernobyl’s Next Top Model.”

At that, Vanessa picked up his hand, pressing his mottled and scarred palm against her face. Her lip was tucked between her teeth and she was searching his eyes, her own dark and troubled. He leaned in, resting his forehead against hers, smiling when he felt her hand tangle in the fabric at his hip. Mm. She smelled like jasmine and copper, as always. He tweaked a long strand of her hair, feeling it curl around his fingers.

“They knew you were moving to New York, Wade.” 

Wade felt Vanessa tense against him. They both pulled away just enough to look at each other, to exchange a wordless question. 

After a beat, Wade turned his face back to his phone. “How the fuck is that possible? We just decided yesterday.” Hearing himself say that, he made a sharp motion with his left hand. “No. No! I’m not falling down another rabbit hole. Forget it.”

Weasel heaved a heavy sigh. “Yeah, well, the guy kind of implied you wouldn’t be welcome in the Big Apple if you didn’t chat with him first.”

“Fuck that guy. New York loves me.” A hand at his jaw pulled his attention back to Vanessa. He threaded his fingers with hers before saying, “Who was it?”

“He didn’t exactly introduce himself,” Weasel hedged, like his namesake. A _weasel_. 

"Don’t give me that bullshit, Weas.” Weasel knew the players better than he did, even the faintly legitimate ones. That was why he was so effective at his job.

“...it was Phil Coulson.” 

Vanessa's eyes rounded at the familiar name. Jerking away from her, Wade shook his head, barking a quick “Fine! I’ll think about it. Goodbye!” over his shoulder. Wade gripped on the edge of the counter, trying not to freak out. 

Meanwhile, Weasel sputtered at the noncommittal statement and tried to press for more, but then Wade threw the empty knife block at the phone, forcing it to skid off the table.  Probably broke it in the process. Oh well. 

After a beat, Wade cocked his head at Vanessa. “Was that rude?”

“You said goodbye,” Vanessa countered. “What more does he want? Small talk?”

Wade snorted. Then he let his head fall back, muttering, with feeling, “ _Fuck._ ” 

He’d never had the chance to meet Coulson in person, but the stories alone were enough to make him leery. Coulson was the spook’s spook, the kind of guy an innocent merc never wanted shadowing his or her doorstep. More than that, though, he was a SHIELD spook, and SHIELD wasn’t exactly known for keeping its nose clean. And Wade would be fine with that normally—zest was the spice of life and all that—but the kind of zest SHIELD dipped its toes in was of the HYDRA variety, and HYDRA tended to be the experimenting type of bad guy. Wade was not going to put Vanessa through that shit again. He wasn’t going to put himself through that again either. One Francis was one too many.

Fucking shit balls.

“We can always stay in Boston,” Wade offered, defeated.

“We can,” Vanessa said agreeably. “But not here.”

Wade dragged his eyes down from the ceiling. “Why not here?" It was a perfectly serviceable apartment. Well, if you ignored the exposed walls and the slight smell of cat urine when it rained.

“You think I don’t see how this apartment triggers you?” Vanessa slipped her cool hand in his again. He grabbed it immediately—he missed it. “Anywhere you want to go, babe. Anywhere but here.”

Wade grasped for a joke. When it didn’t come to him, he just quirked a sad smile at her. A few weeks ago, he’d came home to Vanessa curled up in a chair and distracted by a book, body bathed early afternoon light. It was a familiar sight. A normal sight. For Wade, though, it was a sight seen too soon.

Stricken, he’d wheezed out her name, dropping like a sack of potatoes in the doorway and straight into a full blown panic attack. When he came back to himself, he was pressed against the floor in a fetal position, and Vanessa was wrapped around him like a monkey, holding on tight, whispering encouragement in his ear. _It’s going to be okay_ , she said. How could it? How could it when she was dead, dead, _dead_ -

“Okay, I lied,” Vanessa said when he hesitated too long. She pulled her hands away from him, crossing her arms over her chest. “I do have boundaries. I’m not moving to Canada.” 

Wade frowned down at her. “Uh, rude. Canada is awesome.”

Her face scrunched up at him. “Is it though?”

“Wow,” he said flatly—or tried to, what with that traitorous smile splitting his face. “This is a side of you I never wanted to see.”

Vanessa’s eyebrows shot up. “Ooh, the one with taste?”

Wade finally chuckled. “You are playing with fire.” He sobered, ducking his head. He shook it once, looking at her. “We shouldn’t leave Boston. Your therapist and support group are here.”

“I can get another therapist, and I can get another support group.” Vanessa’s eyes darted away from him. “Besides, you love New York. I haven’t seen you as excited as you’ve been the last two days. Manhattan this, Chinatown that—you never stop talking about it.”

“A place is a place,” Wade said. But she was right. There was something about New York that drew him—the energy, maybe. The food. The people. _Definitely_ the accolades. If he wasn’t named Super Hero of the Year for the third year running, he was going to pitch such a fit. He was a pretty girl, and he _demanded_ the attention, damn it.

“So…” Vanessa dragged the word out, giving it extra syllables before it disappeared into a sigh. She lifted her shoulders helpless. “Talk to the spook. Hear him out.” Vanessa’s hands ran over his stomach, smoothing his shirt down. “If you don’t come home in 24 hours, I’ll blow up the address with one of your rocket launchers. Don’t think I won’t.”

“A woman after my own heart,” Wade said tenderly, swaying closer to her.

Wade knew her too well. They were two sides of the same asshole coin. He watched her, like him, scramble for a joke in a serious moment, and fail to find it. And because she was Vanessa, she decided to deliver brutal honesty instead of letting the moment pass.

“I’m not taking any chances,” she said, eyes finally swinging back up. A wrinkle formed between her eyebrows. “You’d survive a building being blown up, right?”

“I have. Twice.” Before she could ask how, he caught her mouth with his. He kept it slow, shallow—a question more than a demand. But it didn’t take much for her to lean into it, to abandon her post and slide her ass to the edge of the counter, legs hanging loose and open on either side of Wade’s waist. He pressed his palm tight to the small of her back and reeled her in, sliding them together so tight, no light could get through.

They could finish packing later.

 

-

 

It was so typical. After swearing up and down that she had no ties here, after beating Wade over the head with the fact that she hated her therapist, after making a solemn oath that she only vaguely tolerated her support group, what did Vanessa do? 

She made a friend. And at support group, of all things…

First, to be clear, support groups were not Vanessa’s jam. She had enough of them from her stint in the foster system. It was nothing but a bunch of screw ups sitting around in a circle, looking for weaknesses in each other that could be exploited. She approached this one the same way she approached the last one—head up, eyes open, and with a thousand lies ready on her lips.

She charmed over everyone. They drank in her deceptions like bored housewives guzzling wine. No one raised an eyebrow at Vanessa Wilson, Associate Director of Asset Management. No one questioned the polite corporate bee who engaged in the best small talk but said nothing of importance.

No one… except for her new friend.

Her name was Tina Valentino. Tina was tall and around Vanessa’s age. She had a riot of red and orange curls that contrasted sharply with her pale blue eyes. Tina used to bartend at Mickey’s, one of the handful of Boston bars Vanessa used to pick up clients at. While not quite Sister Margaret’s, which was dirty to the bone, Mickey’s was one of those bars with a thin veneer of respectability over its ugly underbelly.

Tina recognized her immediately.

Really, she should have been Vanessa’s downfall. The gotcha that toppled Vanessa’s house of halfhearted lies. In fact, when Tina was introduced to Vanessa, she immediately cracked up laughing at Vanessa’ title and background, wheezing deeper and deeper as every lie revealed itself. But when she was given the opportunity to snitch, Tina proceeded to debunk exactly none of them, sitting on top of their shared deception like it was a secret golden egg she was gleefully willing to guard. It was enough to endear her to Vanessa almost immediately.

To be honest, though, the camaraderie wasn’t the only reason why Vanessa was drawn to her. Visually too, she was interesting. The other woman had scars down her throat to her sternum, leftover presents from what was clearly a spinal injury. If the warped flesh didn’t give it away, then the woman’s stiff hand gestures and bedazzled cane would have. What would Wade think about such pretty scars? They were faintly ribbed and pink and so precisely positioned. There was nothing like it on his body. She would know. His scars were wide and chaotic and ever moving.

It didn't take much prodding to get the story behind the scars. During the Infinity Affair, Tina had broken her neck diving into an old flame’s pool. One minute, there was 6 feet of water underneath her. The next, nothing but a concrete bowl. She’d spent the last couple of months jumping from surgery to surgery, trying to get her full range of motion back.

It sucked, and Tina wanted to talk about it. She wanted to rant about her physical therapy, complain about her old boss who refused to hire her back, and set up a bar hopping group where everyone spent an hour throwing darts at pictures people who pissed them off.

Vanessa had to burst her bubble. “It’s not that kind of support group. It’s very… post-recovery.”

It worked for Vanessa. She didn’t want to talk about her feelings or her experiences. She just wanted the reminder that there were other people out there, dealing with what she was dealing with. The more she was able to see other people living, thriving after the Infinity Affair, the more confident she felt that she could do the same.

Tina was very pre-recovery, and it ached to listen to her. “Fucking Boston. No one wants to talk about shit until they’re charging you $100 an hour for it." 

Vanessa clinked her cup of half-flat soda against Tina. “Cheers, sister. I got a list of asshole therapists, if you want to compare and contrast-”

Tina smiled toothily—and, like that, they were friends, absorbed in their own world and only talking to each other.

What shitty, shitty timing. She was moving in three days.

At the end of that day’s support group, Vanessa swapped contact information with Tina. Then, learning that Tina’s new job was only a few blocks away, Vanessa walked back with her, dropping her usual walking pace to something that matched Tina’s stubborn, slow shuffle. All things considered, it was a pleasant walk. They chatted about shared memories, old acquaintances, and, yes, Mickey’s. Tina remembered Wade too. Before Deadpool, after Deadpool, it didn’t matter—Wade always made an impression.

They stopped just outside of Tina’s work—a library. Faintly embarrassed by it, Tina rambled for a minute about what she did for them—cataloguing books or something—and how they had special mice and keyboards she could work with. A friend of a friend had found her the job, and she resented it just a bit.

It wasn’t enough to keep her in housing. She would have to move back into her mother’s house in Syracuse. She hated it.

Vanessa, on the other hand, was fascinated. She couldn’t quite pinpoint why. 

“Can I ask you for a favor?” she said finally.

“Shoot, sister,” Tina teased. Tina was a teasing kind of person.

“I’ve been doing this art/photography therapy thing.” Her therapist called it a worrying crutch, a safety blanket keeping her from confronting her fears about disappearing.

Was he wrong? Photos couldn’t be taken away. Once there was a picture, reality was there—captured in one perfect still frame. Every time she took a picture of something, she felt like she was saving it somehow. Keeping it real. So she took pictures of things and places and people she liked, and when the insomnia was bad, she flipped through them all until her mind calmed down long enough for her to go back to sleep.

She had a thousand pictures of Wade. She still couldn’t take one photo of herself.

Shaking herself out of the thought, Vanessa smiled thinly at Tina. “Can I take a picture of you?”

Tina blinked rapidly, confused. “Uh, sure,” she agreed unsteadily. She looked around before gesturing to the wall outside of her work. “Here, maybe?”

Vanessa was being humored. It was okay. Her ego could take it.

She took a few test shots, fiddling with the settings and squinting up at the lighting with a glum stare. The one she finally settled on was the last of the set—Tina looking off in the distance over Vanessa’s right shoulder. The scar on her throat almost up lined with the ridges on the column behind her, like she was part of the library itself.

Ephemeral and yet solidly permanent. Some squirmy anxious bug inside of Vanessa died, and, happily, she showed off the final product.

“Wow, girl. You’re good. You can take my photo anytime.”

“Stop,” Vanessa said, pleased nevertheless. She knew what she liked. “All pictures tell a story, right?”

“Yeah,” Tina said darkly. Leaning over Vanessa’s shoulder, she touched her pointer finger to the display of her own face. “I survived. But in the end, who gives a shit?”

Her acerbic tone cut through Vanessa’s enjoyment like a blade through Jell-O. “I can delete it.”

“No, it’s-” Tina’s mouth flattened. She backed up a bit, leaning hard on her cane. Her eyelashes fluttered and her frown settled in as a deep crease between her brows. “We just- we should have been a miracle, right? Everyone should have been happy.”

“People are assholes.” It was a fact of life.

“Yeah, but… it’s more than that, you know?” Tina looked pained suddenly, her eyes overly bright. “Everything I hear at home or work or on the internet… it’s about how disruptive it was that we came back. About how much damage we caused. How expensive we were.” Tina laughed shortly, the noise harsh. “Did you ever notice that? We ruined everything for _them_. Their lives. Their closure. Their recovery. But what about us? What about what we went through?”

“Yeah.” Vanessa looked down at her camera again. Her hands tightened on it.

Just as quickly as Tina’s temper rose, it fell. “Anyway,” she said apologetically, smiling again. “Good luck with the move. I’ll visit you before you know it.”

They exchanged hugs and their goodbyes. Tina limped into the building while Vanessa lingered, staying outside the library, thinking and staring down at Tina’s photo.

Vanessa was deeply preoccupied, and not just with the words Tina left with her. There was another reason why she took such an instant shine to the other woman. A third one. After all, Vanessa didn’t usually like strangers so quickly.

This one was even more stupidly superficial than her scarring. Tina had a very similar jawline to someone she had once known. But who? The harder she tried to remember it, the more it escaped her.

All she could remember was that jaw on that face as it turned to her. That flash of a boyish smile and white teeth.  Dark, dark eyes on a pale face. And, most vividly, long thin fingers miming taking a photo, silhouetted in the background of an unforgiving gold-inked world.

_What about us?_

Vanessa shivered, unsettled and suddenly very lonely.

 

-

 

Peter was jittery and nervous. Excited. Pumped! Also vaguely vomit-y, but that may have been from Quill’s cheeky barrel roll around Pluto.

Yes, Pluto, as in Schrodinger’s planet. As in Pluto-of-the-Milky-Way. As in _home_.

Yeah. He was home. Closer to home, at least, and rapidly approaching it, no longer far away and-

Gosh, his thoughts were tripping over each other like slinkys. Back up. Take five. Start again.

Ahem. So. The Guardians of the Galaxy. Whoa, right? Whoa.

He’d spent the last six months with them as they made good on their self-appointed mission—and the last six months were _wild_. Peter was used to stagnation from Titan, the crawl of days upon days upon days where nothing changed. Nothing moved. There was only death and a twilight sort of existence, like your new normal was living in a morgue or a graveyard.

But once he was with the Guardians, it was like someone had pressed fast forward on his life. Something was happening, _changing_ every day. He wasn’t at a standstill. Progress and change were suddenly measurable again, and obstacles were not the bars of a cage that trapped him in one place. There were still challenges, of course, but they were met, tackled, and brought down with the single-mindedness the Guardians were infamous for.

One of those challenges was the logistics of the trip itself; the Guardians lacked the hardware to make a full trip to Peter’s home and back. Instead of giving up, though, they hunted down everything they needed. Sixteen upgrades later—each one less to code than the last—Quill’s ship could beat even Thanos’ Q-ships in intergalactic travel.

Well, that’s what Quill said, anyway. Gamora had her doubts. They bickered a lot for two people in love.

Anyway, they left almost immediately after Quill’s last supply run, not even needing to spend the extra time Peter expected to iron out the navigation question. Apparently, his fellow human mapped out the way home when he was just fifteen years old. Peter didn’t want to think too much about what that meant for his friend, mostly because Quill shut that conversation down hard and with extreme prejudice.

A few weeks later, and now they were in the Milky Way. Peter was so excited, he wanted to scream. Or vomit. Or cry.

Seriously, though. Everything was lining up. Everything was making sense. Every mission he tagged along with, every night cycle spent poking at “under the hood” with Quill, every accidental injury gained from friend or foe-

It was all leading up to this. Peter was going home.

A crunch sounded right by his left ear. Slowly, Peter turned his head.

Drax was staring at him upside down from the ceiling, a frown especially pronounced on his odd face. Oh. Wait. _Peter_ was the one upside down. He’d thought it kinder to everyone else, to vibrate in excitement in a place where he could bother no one.

Drax crunched again, chewing on some dried ration as his pale eyes narrowed on Peter’s face. “I will miss you, maybe,” he said bluntly. “I haven’t decided.” He moved away, calling out over his shoulder, “Probably not, though.”

Peter bit down on a smile, letting it go. Good byes were hard. He had said them earlier to Mantis, and she was a straight up mess about it.

“You’re happy!” she’d announced, mouth wobbling. “But I’m s-s-so sad!” Then she burst into tears, flinging herself in his arms. That was one hour Peter was never getting back.

And Gamora? Boy. She was even harder but in a different way. She was businesslike and sharp as she packed up his bunk and reminded him of their training. He could hardly get in a word in. Gamora was never a chatterbox, but she was occasionally long-winded when the mood called for it.

“-and keep pressure off your hip,” she was saying. “Your healing rate might be good, but there’s a reason why the Korlath are feared in the wider-”

Unsure what to do, Peter eventually just hugged her. After a beat, she relented, hugging him back, one hand clapped around the back of his neck .

“Thanks. You know. For everything.” Peter backed up, smiling shyly. “Soon, I’ll be out of your hair and back on Earth.”

Gamora’s fingers flew up to the ends of her hair, and her mouth opened. Then she remembered Earth idioms. Her mouth closed, twisting into an indulgent smile instead.  Despite her expression, her next words were grim.

“Earth’s not safe.” She was gazing at him evenly. “Humans are strange and dangerous. Trust no one.”

There was a time where such solemn words would keep him up at night, overthinking what he thought were portents from a badass harbinger of doom. Now, he just sassed her. “No one at all?” he objected playfully.

Gamora’s smirk was tucked tightly in her cheek, like she couldn’t help herself. “Fine. May Parker.” She leaned in, non-existent eyebrows raising meaningfully. “No one else.” After a beat, they grinned at each other.

Peter delighted in this. Ever the eternal Star Trek fan in their Star Wars household, May was going to get such a kick out of the fact that an actual green alien was her number 1 fan. Peter couldn’t wait to tell her.

But yeah. Back to goodbyes. Of all the Guardians, Quill? Quill was the absolute worst at them. Peter couldn’t get the guy pinned down long enough to even talk, let alone say good bye. Quill would literally fast walk away every time he tried.

But now, judging by the relative positions of all the other Guardians (and the really unsafe, clearly not autopilot maneuvers Peter just weathered), there was only one place Quill could be. And he was a captive audience. With this devious plan in mind, Peter dropped down from the ceiling and moved to the front of the ship.

The cockpit was strangely dark, windows blacked out. Only the consoles were glowing. As he thought, only the man on his mind was there, manning the ship’s trajectory with the kind of absent mindedness that came with living and breathing space ships.

Peter suppressed a sigh. As much as Quill annoyed him, the man was really freaking cool. In comparison, Peter felt every bit of the tiny, asthmatic nerd child he was before a spider randomly bit him.

Standing behind Quill, Peter couldn’t even figure out how to start the conversation—did Quill notice he was there yet? Peter was probably mouth breathing, like _a mouth breather_. Ugh.

Awkward, Peter tried a couple of positions with his arms before one hand caught and held onto one of the straps in the ceiling. His sleeve fell, loose, down his arm, pooling at his elbow. The most he could say about his borrowed space clothing was that they were a nice shade of gray and certainly more Drax’s size than his own. He felt like an elephant with saggy skin, but it was preferable to the alternative. His hip throbbed in agreement.

The reason why the Korlath were feared in the wider galaxy was because of the venom they had in their paws, much like an Earth platypus. It caused swelling and immense pain in most species, so much so that the slang name for their venom was the Beckoner of Death. As in real people tried to kill themselves, it hurt so bad. Humans, apparently, were the exception. When Peter and Quill were poisoned, the injuries swelled up, turned red, then yellow, and then leaked some weird, foul smelling pus. Then they were fine.

When a disappointed Drax demanded to know why they did not seek their own deaths, Quill cited their shared species, airily comparing the Beckoner of Death to a mere bee sting. (It was actually still pretty darn painful, to be honest, and Peter was the one with the healing factor, not Quill. Quill was a prideful idiot, and that was all Peter would say on the matter.)

As if sensing Peter’s less than charitable thoughts, the pilot finally looked over his shoulder. “Morning,” Quill said distractedly. His hand was moving over a small console, the one he usually used to send out messages. Not that Peter ever figured it out. It seemed to only communicate in beeps and flashing lights, and it was not Morse code either. He checked.

“How close are we?”

“Very.”

Quill’s ship beeped and trilled in the silence.

A thousand questions shot through Peter’s brain. He rubbed at his face, choosing the most pressing one. “What’s the chance we’ll be shot down?”

Quill smirked. “Zero. We’re approaching under stealth.” He glanced at Peter over his shoulder again before turning his focus back to his consoles. “For all we know, Earth is trigger happy about aliens right now—not that I’d blame them.” He made a weird gesture with his hand, beckoning Peter closer. “But here, I have something to show you.”

Peter made a questioning noise, but Quill didn’t look at him, didn’t even turn to face him. Instead, he pressed a sequence of buttons that made the viewing window clear up, revealing the sight in front of them, which was-

“Oh,” Peter said quietly.

“Oh,” Quill agreed.

In front of them was a gleaming blue sphere of water, dirt, and humanity. Home.

Peter wasn’t aware of how long he stood there, staring, until Quill cleared his throat uncomfortably, banging at the console with more force than necessary. Peter took the hint and wiped his face off with his sleeve, chuckling roughly. “C-cool.”

“Cool, he says,” Quill muttered under his breath. Then, louder, he said, “I’m getting a signal. Rocket, that rat bastard, he stole my tech before hitching a ride with Thor.” Despite the words, Quill was smiling. To his left, a video feed popped up on a monitor, showing Earth. Then it abruptly zoomed in on something on the ground, gleaming red.

It was a structure of some sort, a Frankenstein beast of metal and plastic, rigged together inelegantly on a very green lawn. Peter squinted and leaned over his shoulder.

“Is that shaped like a dick?”

“That’s Rocket, for sure.” Peter and Quill shared an amused look with each other. “I’m gonna send him a message, see if he responds.”

Lost in his own thoughts, Peter stared down at Earth quietly as Quill tapped away at the console in front of him. Quill’s chair warped slightly under his grip before Peter noticed and took his hand off the metal.

“Is it bad that I’m kind of scared to go home?” Peter blurted out.

“We can turn this around at any time,” Quill replied, as if it was obvious. “You don’t have to go home.”

Peter sputtered at that. “Your friends—Mr. Rocket or Groot-”

“Please,” Quill snapped, “if he had time to make it look like a dick, Rocket probably has half of a working ship already. We could catch him around the moon once his heap of junk breaks orbit.”

The console beeped three times. Quill’s head snapped to it, squinting at the reading. Peter stood very quietly, barely daring to breathe. That was it. That was the message Quill was waiting for. Peter had to go home now.

And Peter should have been happy about that. Ecstatic, even. But all he felt was an odd sense of grief. A lack of closure. A sour end.

Then Quill sighed. He looked up at the ceiling, as if counting to ten.

A few moments later, he said, gently, “What I’m trying to say is… you’re an important part of the team, Pete.”

Peter frowned at the back of his head. He knew that already. He hadn’t always appreciated it, especially in the beginning when he was bluntly told to earn his keep. A very young part of him had been terrified at such a concept. But when he realized that just meant that he needed clean up after his bunk and be a look out and occasionally pitch in with food because meal options were few and they were bored with what they had, he was outraged.

Seriously annoyed about how little they expected him, Peter pushed and pushed for greater inclusion and greater responsibilities. And he pushed until the day he stood shoulder to shoulder with Gamora and Quill and the others as they negotiated for parts or evaded arrest by some kingdom of stiff faced gold people or took down an intergalactic forger and his very, very armed mercenaries.

Peter didn’t need Quill to tell him he was part of the team, okay? He was well aware of it. Just as he was well aware of how temporary it all was. New York was always going to be Peter’s priority. That was where all his people were.

Except for the few that were in space.

Ah. There was the grief.

Leaning over the back of his chair, Peter nudged Quill’s head with two knuckles. Quill swatted at him. “You have a tendency to pick up strays, Quill. I’m not a stray.”

Quill snorted, mouth pulled into a smirk. “Whatever—and good riddance, you huge pain in my ass.”

Peter didn’t take it personally. He hadn’t taken anything personally from Quill since that horrible day Quill jumped in front of a space platypus to take the brunt of a paw that hadn’t been aimed at him in the first place.

“I never wanted back on this stupid planet,” Quill said suddenly. “Not after my mom died. Especially not after how I learned she died.” Quill pulled his eyes away from the planet. He cleared his throat. “But you’re not me. And you have your aunt, right?”

“Right.” And his friends. And his city. His people.

“Aunts are like moms,” Quill offered, as if making a huge concession.

“This one is.”

Quill grinned at him briefly before rising from the pilot seat. Then he paused, like he wasn’t sure what to do, but standing up to do it had convinced him it needed to be done. He clapped Peter in a hard, brief hug, which Peter automatically reciprocated. Then, as he pulled away, Quill rubbed a teasing, rough hand through his hair.

Crying out in outrage, Peter wiggled away—damn it, every time! “Uncool, man.”

The longer Peter scowled at him, the bigger Quill’s grin became. “Buckle up, Spider-Boy,” he cackled before opening up the internal ship speakers. “Drax, Mantis, Gamora—get to the cockpit. Rocket just gave me a green light. We’re entering orbit!”

There were whooping cheers throughout the entire ship. Peter’s answering grin was outrageous and just a little bit painful.

Everything happened fast after that, tripping and tumbling after each other. Entering the atmosphere was rough, as it always was. Peter usually stuck himself firmly to his seat, eyes clenched shut and sticky fingers holding on for dear life. This time, though, Peter kept his eyes open, on the edge of his threadbare cushion.

He was hungry for the sight—blue on blue on blue. Then it wasn’t blue anymore. It was gray and tan and green and red and textured. Details of buildings started materializing, vague shapes at first before the distinct features—like color and height and branding—came out. It was like zooming through Google Earth to street view. If you blinked too long, you were missing most of it.

The ship rattled around them steadily. They weren’t met by jet planes and attack helicopters, like Peter feared. As promised, no one even reacted to the ship’s entry into American airspace, not even when Quill almost clipped a commercial airliner.

“Whoops.”

Peter recognized New York before he recognized the compound—the new home of the Avengers. And even that, he didn’t recognize until they had landed with a scraping groan in full sightline of the Avenger’s styled logo, emblazoned on the side of the main building. He cut himself some slack on that one. He’d come here exactly once when he had been offered a place with the Avengers. He’d turned it down, believing he wasn’t ready for it.

He was ready now. Even if he was trembling with nerves. Happy nerves? Sad ones? May the world never find out—because he was going to be cool about this, damn it. It was going to be _Oh hey, Mr. Stark_ and _Nice to see you, Aunt May_ , not ugly, uncool tears.

By the time Peter quelled his urge to projectile vomit, Quill was out of his seat and further back in the cockpit, lecturing his friends. “Do not touch, lick, eat, or steal anything from this planet. I know Earth is the butt of a lot of jokes, but there are many things here that can kill you—rampaging elephants, poisonous snakes, great white sharks, Taco Tuesdays from unregulated street vendors, giant man-eating spiders—no offense, Pete-”

The Guardians were almost more excited than Peter was, rolling out of the cockpit with the glee Peter previously attributed only to preschoolers on free cookie day. Even Gamora, the most level-headed member of the team, elbowed Drax in the face to get to the rear ship doors first. Peter wisely stayed towards the back, letting even Quill cut in front of him.

“No pushing, no running, and absolutely no biting—Mantis, I’m looking at you.”

Mantis looked back at him with a full pout, antenna glowing in the near darkness of the ship’s cargo bay. Quill pointed two fingers at his eyes, then at her. She settled grumpily, crossing her arms over her chest.

“I’m not getting any younger, Quill,” Drax snapped. He blinked once. “Because that is not the way time works. Time moves forward, not backwards.”

Quill growled. “That’s not what the saying- ugh never mind.” He slammed his palm over a button, and the rear ship doors opened slowly with a hitch, letting in bright afternoon light.

Peter sucked in a choked breath, smelling grass and car exhaust and other familiar things that kicked him straight in the memory bits of his brain. His anxiety peaked; imagining home while trapped on Titan was so much easier than actually being here.

Peter clenched his fist by his side. _Be cool, Peter. Just be cool._

When the ramp finally hit the ground, it did so at the feet of an extremely judgmental four-foot rodent.

He stood there with a glare, his arms crossed over his chest. “What took you so long?”

“I was dead,” Gamora said bluntly, stepping out from behind Mantis.

“Holy shit, you were,” Rocket said, arms dropping from their defensive stance. “Hey, good on you, being alive and all that.”

Mantis pushed past Gamora with a tiny scream, throwing herself at Rocket and sweeping him up in a hug.

Rocket squirmed, trying to push her away. “Yeah, yeah, knock it off with the touchy feely. I know you missed me.” Drax joined in, then Gamora and Quill, turning it into a group hug—and the more the raccoon complained, the more eager his teammates were to smoother him in affection. Then a gangly tree thing hopped up on the loading platform with a slightly uncoordinated gait.

“I am Groot!” it said excitedly, and then wrapped both vines and arms around the group—too hard, it seemed, because everyone in the huddle gagged or gasped, complaining loudly about the constriction. Then someone lost their footing, and the whole group fell over with a ship rattling thud.

This was exactly the opposite of a cool reunion. Peter was taking mental notes.

“I am Groot,” Groot said apologetically, withdrawing a little. This provoked some laughs, and the group parted from each other, some getting off the ground faster than others. Their voices tripped over one another’s. It was almost too much stimulation for Peter, used to the silence of space:

“Oh my god, you’ve gotten so big, dude!”

“-missed you, you dumb bastard-”

“-am Groot?”

“-is that a new scar? Bad ass.”

“ _Nebula!_ ”

The cry silenced the Guardians, turning their attention away from each other and the ship. Walking up the ramp was a familiar, blue skinned woman. At Mantis’ shout, the woman froze and shot her a lethal stare. Mantis wilted and moved out of her range.

Nevertheless, the alien continued to approach, like she was merely an object at the end of a string being tugged towards the edge of a cliff. “Assholes,” she greeted with a rasp. Then her eyes rounded slightly, and she froze.

“Sister,” Gamora whispered, pushing up from her bent knee.

Nebula twitched towards her, her hand grasping reflexively at her side. Then she forcibly rounded her shoulders and glared over her shoulder. “Gamora,” she spat. She was shaking.

Peter took a big step back. The huge contrast between the steadily growing beautiful smile on Gamora’s face and Nebula’s conflicted hostility was making the hair on Peter’s arms raise.

But Nebula was blinking rapidly. “I am so-” Her voice dipped, becoming almost robotic. “I’m so fucking sorry.”

Gamora shook her head. In two steps, she closed the distance between the two of them, engulfing her sister in a tight hug. She pulled away just far enough to cup Nebulas’s face, tears in her eyes.

Peter looked away. It didn’t seem right to watch this—not when reclusive, introspective Gamora was so raw in this exact moment, reunited with the only person in the universe who understood the shattered childhood that came from living under Thanos’ rule.

So Peter looked back at the tree thing, interested. He’d seen some weirder things as a guest of the Guardians of the Galaxy, but Groot made him stop for a moment, even with the heads up.

Of course, the pause in the ridiculous family reunion meant that Peter was suddenly at the center of attention as the last two members of the Guardians sized up the one person they didn’t know.

“Take a picture, it lasts longer,” Rocket snarled protectively.  

Peter’s manners kicked in. “Oh! Nice to finally meet you, Mr. Rocket, Groot.” Groot obligingly waved at him, his gnarled face open and warm.

“Mister?” Rocket echoed, blinking wildly. The hostility faded from his face. “Oh boy.”

“Be nice,” Quill muttered. “He’s a friend.”

Peter smiled winningly as Rocket looked him up and down with clear, visible doubt on his furry face.

Then a familiar voice rose—irritated, annoyed, and just out of sight.

“Did you really have to park your crap heap on my fountain, Quill? We have landing pads everywhere. Surely you saw them from space-”

Peter jerked, as if poked by a hot iron. He hobbled down the landing ramp at a quick clip, clearing it in seconds and leaving his space friends behind.

Next to the ship, and utterly distracted by it, was none other than Tony Stark. He was looking up at the hull of it with sharp eyes and a semi-permanent frown. He seemed like he’d had the good intention of swapping out his business clothes before heading down to his workshop, but forgot half-way. He was wearing a stained tank top, dusty but otherwise elegant slacks, and shiny, shiny black shoes. 

“Mr. Stark,” Peter croaked, voice harsh. Tony flinched, his head snapping to him instantly.

Tony looked… not great. He’d lost ten to twenty pounds, and it was visible most in the hollows of his face. His eyes were dull, red, and tired. His bags had bags of their own, and his usually immaculate scruff was untidy and untrimmed.

But then Tony was smiling, a slowly dawning expression that creased the skin by his eyes and pulled his mouth into a huge, irrepressible smile. His dull expression lit up, sharpening, imbuing that familiar face with such vitality, such warmth-

Peter walked the rest of the way towards him, forcing himself out of the weird trot his hip demanded of him. Instead, he stood up straight, trying to project adulthood and maturity. He was gonna be cool about this. So cool. He promised himself.

Although the smile never left, the closer he got to Mr. Stark, the more wide and wounded his eyes became. When Peter finally got close enough to reach out for a hand shake, his voice started stammering in self-defense. “H-hey, Mr. Stark-”

Tony ignored his hand. Instead, he yanked Peter into a tight hug, tight enough to squeeze the breath out of him. Peter sagged in relief. Some teeny, tiny part of him that kept reliving Mr. Stark being stabbed on Titan? It died a quiet death. Tony breathed his name quietly, squeezing him even harder, like maybe some nightmare of Tony’s just died too.

When they parted, they were shooting each other identical grins.

Tony gave Peter a lingering clap. “Took you long enough,” he mocked.

“Hey, it was my first time in space. Cut me some slack.”

Tony looked him up and down judgingly. Two fingers tugged at Peter’s shirt. “You certainly do look like someone whose been abducted by aliens-”

Peter lifted a hand. “Whoa, I’m going to stop you right there. I have lived many, many months with an eighties man child. I have heard all of the alien abduction jokes. _All of them._ Most of them weren’t even funny the first time-”

“I think you’re underestimating my creativity-”

“And I think you’re overestimating my-” Patience, he was going to say. But Peter stopped, head tipping to the side.

Tony had a smug smirk on his face, even when he faked concern. “Hm? Alien got your tongue?" 

Peter ignored him, trying to place the familiar sound. When he realized what it was, he said, “Since when do you have helicopters?”

Something about that had Tony blanching suddenly. He backed away from Peter, smoothing down Peter’s clothes in an offhanded, parental way even as his worried eyes jumped back up to the ship.

“Hey, Cujo, Treebeard, Smurfette!” he called out. Oddly enough, Nebula, Rocket, and Groot responded to these names, looking over the landing ramp at Tony questioningly. The rest of the Guardians crowded behind them.

Tony jerked a thumb back at the compound, expression grim. “Your best friends, the feds, are going to be here in about, oh, 20 seconds. Maybe you should be gone in ten?”

The Guardians exchanged a glance and, like a pack of children about to be caught red handed by their teacher, they immediately exploded into action. Rocket and Groot sprinted back to the half-ship on the lawn, grabbing everything they could. Drax and Nebula darted back into the ship, and Quill tossed a familiar box out the side of the ramp.

Peter caught it one handedly, yelling out a distracted thanks. What was with the speed? Maybe they had worn out their welcome? Mantis zipped by with a giant piece of spaceship over her head, her face faintly purple. 

Peter tried to let it go. “Mr. Stark, I was a bit hard on the suit,” he confessed immediately, having to raise his voice over the sound of the ship coming back to life. “I did as much repairs as I could, but it’s pretty bad-”

Karen hadn’t been able to speak to him in months, most of the systems were completely down, and the suit itself was torn from hip to hip. He hadn’t worn it in weeks, which he felt guilty about. But he still kept the mask and he chatted with Karen on a daily basis, the pulsing lights of her responses strangely soothing.

But before Peter could open the box and show him the damage, Mr. Stark clapped a hand on the lid. “Keep it in there.”

Peter paused, not liking the look on his mentor’s face. His warning sense hadn’t stopped tingling since the ship touched ground. He had yet to see a threat, but Mr. Stark’s expression made him wonder what the heck happened while he was gone.

Iron Man should never look that scared.

Behind him, the Guardians were already arguing with each other. On his final trip, Rocket dashed back to the ship with a bag four times his size. Peter tracked his journey. On the top of the bag, there was a bundle strapped down that looked suspiciously like a metal arm. He tossed it without care to the side of the cargo bay, disappearing from sight. Everyone else was already inside, yelling back and forth at each other.

Everyone, except Quill. Quill was crouched on the ramp, looking down at him. “Hey, you gonna be okay?”

Peter forced a smile. “Yeah,” he said immediately. The kneejerk response became genuine a moment later. “I’m home.”

The corners of Quill’s eyes creased slightly when he smiled—not quite like Mr. Stark’s did, because Quill’s smile was a little sad. “Bye, Pete.” Less friendly, Quill nodded briskly at Peter’s mentor. “Stark.”

“We’re leaving without you, Quill!” Rocket threatened from somewhere deep in the ship.

“Hold your horses,” Quill shouted over his shoulder. Wincing, he looked back down at Tony and Peter. “You may want to back up. The exhaust on this thing is killer.”

Peter was pulled back from the ship by a grip on his elbow. Still cradling his box, he waved good-bye to his friends, cheerfully sending them off. He paused mid-gesture when he saw black helicopters converging on the ship—trying and failing to box it in as it rose steadily in the sky. Going, going…

Gone.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was going to do something more to Peter, but... now that's in the next chapter. :)


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the delay again! I've been focusing on my entry for the Spideypool Big Bang. (It's very long. T_T) If you're interested in Spideypool with a Peter-focus, check out my entry! It will be posted on 2/25. 
> 
> Anyway, check out the end notes for an excerpt and summary of the next fic in this series.

“You’re spry for a dead man,” Wade commented to the shiny chrome ceiling, tapping his fingers across a shiny chrome table. He leaned back in his comfy office chair and his attention wandered, pulled by the windowless room and the fun, off-colored paneling across the walls that made him think of spring mounted internal security measures—aka modern Gatling-style weapons that popped out of walls in evil dude lairs.

Fun fun fun. You know, the cartel he’d wrecked in South America had some of those. That and tanks, jets, and rocket launchers—boy, that was an awesome assignment. Most criminals got the semi-automatic level and called it a day. Of course, the government had the exact opposite problem. They didn’t know when to quit. Sometimes that tenacity was great, resulting in uber hunks like the America Dream in action. But most of the time, it was bad, resulting in awful things like HYDRA surviving WWII and people like Francis setting up mutant super slave factories.

It was generally Wade’s preference not to work with nor talk to government bodies, but here he was.

“I have to say, I’m surprised you came,” Phil Coulson replied. “Mr. Hammer doesn’t strike me as a persuasive figure.”

Wade lifted his head, eyeing the spook and his henchman. Henchwoman? “He promised me his left testicle and his first born. Get on with it.” For the fifteenth time, he spun in the spinny chair. Ooh, sparkles.

“Very well,” Coulson commented dryly. He nodded at his henchwoman, who Wade was going to pretend he didn’t recognize. The less “The Calvary” knew about the Russian mark he’d sniped out from under her nose, the better.  

“We have an extensive file on you, Mr. Wilson,” Melinda May commented, tapping on a tablet. 17 holographic windows opened up around them, showing different surveillance videos from different assignments from the last couple of years. Wade’s hand clapped against the table and his spinning came to an abrupt stop. He looked up at them in awe. They’d somehow even picked up a recording back from when he was in Special Forces. Wade laughed out loud at the sight of a 6 foot 2 heartthrob in all black silently wipe out the leader of a terrorist cell. Someone in the Canadian military was going to be _super_ pissed.

“My murdering skills are pretty legendary.” Wade made a heart with his hands, framing it around hot!Wade’s butt. Aw, if only he lived in a universe where selfcest was a thing.

Masturbation. _Fuck_. 

“And getting less and less discreet as time goes on,” May replied, eyes narrowing.

Wade pulled back at that a little, head whipping between those two government trained poker faces. He chuckled again, but this time, it was 100% sarcasm. “I’m sorry, I thought this was a job interview. Why are we jumping straight to the performance evals?”

May and Coulson looked at each other. Then Coulson leaned forward, folding his hands over the table. “I’m still trying to understand who Wade Wilson is.”

“Well, I know who you are,” Wade fired back, tone saucy. “People threw parties when they heard you were dead.”

Coulson’s eyebrows lifted. “That’s hurtful. I’m hurt.”

“You should be,” Wade confided, leaning back in his chair again. He propped his boots up on the table, folding his hands over his stomach as he recalled, “Finger foods only, flat sodas, no balloons. Now when Fury died, oh boy! Strippers, confetti, and top shelf liquor for everyone.” Wade slammed his fist against the table, tense, ready to leap off the chair in a moment’s notice. “Of course, that fucker’s probably not dead either, huh?”

“Director Fury’s death is a matter of public record,” May said, not really answering.

“And SHIELD doesn’t exist,” Wade shot back mockingly. “Right.” After a brief moment, he giggled and sank back in the chair, folding his arms behind his head now. “Just joshing you, I don’t care. Government conspiracy, secret agencies, and whatnot—so not my area. How do you all even keep your lies straight? I can barely track what time it is-”

“And what is your area, Mr. Wilson?” Coulson asked.

Wade tensed. “Whatever the fuck I want it to be, Chuckles,” he said darkly, voice low.

Coulson stared at him for a while before nodding. “Of course,” he said. Wade immediately knew he wasn’t going to like what the spook said next. “Let’s recap. You honed your skills on terrorists and enemies of the state as a solider for a number of years. Then you were dishonorably discharged and became a mercenary. As a mercenary, however, your targets remained local and small time and with an… odd altruistic bend.” Coulson tipped his head to May. “What was it again?”

“Bad guys who fuck with worse guys.”

Wade blinked wildly. He swung a finger between the two of them, whispering, “Does ABC allow you guys to curse or…?”

“Then you suddenly rebranded yourself as Deadpool and uprooted 17 international crime organizations over the course of three years. Popped up on a lot of people’s kill lists, you did. Not that that did anything, what with your unique… talents.” Coulson paused. His tone changed. “Then Thanos happened-”

“Fuck that guy.”

“Agreed,” Coulson said easily. His eyes narrowed. “Following that and in the span of only 18 months, you killed somewhere between 250 to 450 invading alien beings up and down the east coast.”

Wade struggled to see the issue. “Well, you’re welcome.” He reached across the table. “High five?”

His hand was ignored. After an awkward, prolonged silence, Wade retreated on his side of the table, his chair squeaking in empathy. Coulson smiled faintly, but it was a shallow expression, like the kind of practiced smile you gave your house’s new furry friend after they tore the shit out of something expensive, and you weren’t allowed to scream at them.

“For just a moment, put yourself on my side of the table, Mr. Wilson,” Coulson said finally. “Why do you think I’m concerned that you want to move to New York on a permanent basis?”

Wade paused, thinking. He didn’t have to reach. “You think I’m escalating.”

“New York has a lot of high profile targets,” May pointed out, “including the home base of our world one’s defense against another Thanos.” 

Wade kicked his boots off the table, shooting to his feet. “You take that back,” he snapped, seething. “I am pro-Avengers. Super pro-Avengers—especially the hot ones.” When the spooks just stared back at him, Wade rocked back on his heels. Plaintively, he hissed, “Ever since Iron Man rode a nuke into space and saved us from an early Chitauri occupation, people a world over have tried carving a piece out of your special little boy band. Do you know how many Avenger markers I’ve had to trace back to their original client?”

“67,” May said. Her eyebrows pressed together as she frowned at him. “Mr. Wilson, there is a reason why we’re extending this offer to you.”

Coulson nodded along with her. “You are… unorthodox, unfriendly, and mildly psychotic. I disagree—wildly—with your methods, and, under different circumstances, I would be meeting with a team to extract, detain, and subdue you to contain your activities.”

 Wade’s jaw tightened. “Is this where you start threatening my loved ones?”

Coulson paused at that. Wade didn’t clarify. Didn’t have to. Vanessa had to be on the dossier. So too were probably Al and Weasel. Dopinder. Dom, Flame Boy, and Thanos-lite. The tin man and his lesbian daughters. _X-Force._ Wade knew what his pressure points were. For a merc, he had an awful lot of emotional connections. Wade might hate himself sometimes, but torture, mutation, a shitty upbringing, and his time in the military didn’t do much to deaden his warm and gushy feelings for certain people.

“The intent of this meeting is to develop a relationship,” Coulson said finally. “I’d like for it to be a positive one.”

Wade stared at him. “…good answer.” Wade slowly lowered himself back to his chair. “You have a fancy contract for me?”

“A contract between an organization that doesn’t exist and a man who doesn’t honor contracts? That would be a waste of time, don’t you think?” Coulson clasped his hands together. “I am a man of my word.”

“Well, I’m sure as hell not,” Wade lied baldly.

“You’ll want to be,” said Coulson.

Wade sighed heavily at this, squirming. He looked up at the ceiling. He looked back at the walls. He tapped his fingers against the table again. Then, unable to delay any longer, he sighed again, saying, “Terms?”

$200,000 base salary. $20,000 extra for every mission or assignment he took for the spooks and their super secret, super spook squad. It was pennies compared to some of his other marks. But with it came benefits, like the shiny pass with SHIELD and its sister agencies, which was a valuable commodity Wade couldn’t stick a price tag on. Wade could also turn down assignments if he didn’t agree with them, which was a sticking point he ended up having with his military career.

But it had a hell of a lot of strings attached. Regular reporting. No weapons budget. Any other expenses had to be paid out of pocket too. If Wade ever got caught, they weren’t saving his ass. They would leave him out to dry—May was very clear about that. And Wade lost his assignment veto power when the threat rating of the mission exceeded a certain level. Basically, if more than 1,000,000 people were threatened by his inaction, a veto was a no-go—which was really goddamn unfair, considering where he was trying to move. New York was tightly packed as it was. A badly timed fight with the wrong bad guys could endanger at least 1,000,000 people very quickly.

And then there was this shit:

“We get to control any marks you take outside of this arrangement,” May pushed.

“No,” Wade snapped. “You get to give me a list of people I’m not supposed to kill, and I’ll _kindly_ review it every time I take an assignment.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “Don’t be a smartass and give me the freaking census. You get 50 names, and not one more.”

May barely blinked. “100.”

“Absolutely fucking not,” Wade barked. He liked her.

“75,” Coulson countered, chin in his hand, “and I’ll put in a good word with Tony Stark about your place with the Avengers.”

Wade froze at that. Ouch.  Well, wasn’t that a pressure point Wade didn’t expect to be pressed. Then he nodded. “…Fine.” Wade grinned. “See, Clark, now you’re speaking my language.”

“It’s Phil.”

“Eh. I don’t like it.” Wade turned his gaze to the woman. “Is that on the table, or…”

“Absolutely not,” she said flatly.

Wade pouted. “Aw…” Then a thought occurred to him. “Hey, I’ll bump the list of names to 85 if you help me and my girl secure our apartment in New York.” Wade grinned when that, of all things, was the request that took the spooks by surprise. “Yeah, we found a nice one-bedroom apartment in Manhattan. Not too shabby, not too expensive. Has an adorable kitchen nook that made me go _bananas_. Anyhoo, the landlord is being a cocktease. Won’t commit. Won’t send me the lease.” Wade made a circular motion with his hand. “Something about me being a mutie freak? I’d handle it myself, but I think we all know how that would end up…”

His apartment would be decorated with a lot more than their old furniture, was what he was trying to say. Wink wink. Nudge nudge. Kill kill.

Coulson seemed to brighten up slightly. “Housing discrimination? We can help with that.” _Of course you can, you government fuck._ “What’s the address?”

 

-

 

The paint roller slipped out of Vanessa’s hand. Grumbling half-heartedly, she sank down next to it, sitting on the sliding plastic that protected the wood floors. Her back was aching. So was her arms. But now their new living room was no longer an Exorcist green.

Instead, it was a calmer tan. She did that. All by herself, even.

Vanessa closed her eyes briefly, feeling melancholy dance around her mind. She wanted to blame the paint fumes or the surprisingly depressing Celine Dion song that was stuck on repeat on Wade’s music player. The first problem, she’d addressed by opening up the windows as far as they could go. The second problem, though, was insurmountable. With her own records and CDs lying at the bottom of a box somewhere else in the apartment, she was stuck with Wade’s—and this song meant something to him, clearly.

Someone knocked at the front door. Her head shot up. “Wade?” Body pain forgotten, she quickly got to her feet and opened the door.

But it wasn’t Wade. It was their new landlord. He blinked rapidly, that red little man, mopping up his sweating forehead with a cloth. He smiled, his gap-toothed grin and spare pornstache wiggling with the effort to look friendly. 

“L-looks amazing, Mrs. Wilson,” he stammered.

She met this compliment with a silent, dubious eyebrow. This was the same fuckwad who turned purple and screamed at her and taught her that ‘dirty mutant fucker’ was an insult instead of a statement of fact.

He wilted visibly under her gaze. “Just wanted to make sure you were settling in alright. P-please let me know if you need anything else. Pleasure doing business.” He stared at her for a moment longer before hurrying out of the apartment like the hounds of hell were nipping at his heels. Or one Deadpool.

Vanessa closed the door behind him. After a beat, she smiled. The landlord hadn’t even met Wade yet in person, and he was this scared? Heh. The government spooks had certainly lived up to their name. Vanessa turned back to the wall, her smile turning into a frown. It had been two weeks since she moved in, and Wade wasn’t even in New York yet. The spooks already had him on a job.

He’d made her swear up and down to leave at least all of the furniture moving and half of the boxes for him, but she didn’t listen well. Already, she’d nudged and shoved and poked the living room into a rough approximation of what it would eventually look like—plus plastic sheeting to protect everything from paint drips. A smarter person would have painted first, but she did so like multitasking.

However, any sort of smug satisfaction at doing exactly the opposite of what Wade had asked was now fading in the absence of him. All she felt was alone. Alone and headache-y.

“What a Suzy Homemaker you turned out to be, Nessie,” she muttered. Props to Wade for making a proper wife out of her. Temper flaring, she pushed the box closer to her. It spun off the stack, tipping over and spilling kitchen utensils over the floor. Vanessa darted back just in time to avoid the knife block crushing her toes, but swore anyway, crouching to deal with the mess.

The last thing to come out of the box was an apron with Bea Arthur on it. Her temper abruptly died. She cradled the apron to her chest. She closed her eyes briefly, smirking. This was why Wade didn’t want her to do the apartment. He knew her mind went to shitty, dark places when she was alone.

Wade wasn’t her father’s friends, leering at her and coveting her and shoving her into a male fantasy box before Vanessa was old enough to know the difference between girls and boys. If anyone in their relationship was a Suzy Homemaker, it was _Wade_. Wade did all the cooking in the house and, although they regularly fought over the cleaning, he never expected her to be any more inclined than him to want to clean.

And if she wasn’t doing the whole homemaker thing right, then she sure as hell wasn’t succumbing to the urge to be barefoot and pregnant. Hell, Wade didn’t press her about the baby thing after that one night in the bathroom, even though she’d basically promised him. Vanessa was relieved. She wanted a kid still. She really did. But Wade insisted a family didn’t need a kid to be whole. They already were one and had plenty of extended members too. Creepy uncles included.

But sometimes it helped to think that the baby was around the corner. Maybe not soon, maybe not even this year, but there still. Waiting patiently in the wings for Vanessa to make her move. And maybe it was maladaptive, or whatever, but she liked it the same way she liked hearing about other people’s stories of the Infinity Affair.

It always implied that her bad days had a conclusion. Like an end of a chapter or a book that she could point at and say, huh. Remember that day? That was when Mommy got high off paint fumes and got melodramatic about things that didn’t matter.

What did matter was she existed. She was real. She was alive. She was living, and she had Wade still. And between her and Wade, they had a new home in the Big Apple, that big city Wade so dearly loved.

Vannessa strung the apron around her neck, standing on wobbly legs. She grabbed her phone and walked over to the wall length mirror in the bedroom. She glared at her reflection a bit. Then she thought about Wade and took a photo.

The phone’s camera wasn’t bad. She preferred her big camera. There was a stillness behind her eyes she still didn’t like. But she was there, genuinely smiling. There was paint in her hair and paint smudged across her cheek, but she was comfortable in a pair of old leggings and an old Wham! shirt of Wade’s.

Vanessa stared at the result a little bit longer. She looked… She looked like she was getting better. 

Vanessa’s chest swelled in an odd jubilance, and, before she thought it through, she automatically looked for him.

“What do you-” _think_ , she was going to ask, going to say out loud, going to direct at a person in the room. A person who wasn’t there. A person who wasn’t Wade, who wasn’t their future kid, who wasn’t even their creepy landlord.

Vanessa closed her eyes and let herself wallow in the sudden aching loneliness of it, the desire to race back to a gold inked world. Then she squelched it. That desire should have died at the bottom of the bathroom tub in Boston along with the trust she had in herself, but it didn’t. But she was stronger than it. Stronger than her experiences, stronger than her urges, stronger than the temptation to go back to that world. Just one last time.

“Well, I think it looks good,” she said to the empty air. “I always look good.” She sent the picture off to Wade so he could see what he was missing, so maybe he would come back home just a little sooner.

 

-

 

The stairs up to Aunt May’s apartment were long and—not going to lie—a bit agonizing. For all the wrong reasons.

May opened the door at the first knock. Peter shrank slightly at the sight of her, sticking his hands in his pockets. He was in so much trouble.

“This belong to you?” the cop asked. Peter fought the urge to throw off the man’s hand on his shoulder. That would be rude. Jefferson Davis had been nothing but kind to him, all things considered.

May smiled thinly. “Yup.” Her eyes darted over Peter’s face, lingering on his sore mouth and throbbing cheekbone. After a beat, she stepped aside. Cowed, Peter dropped his head and approached her, leaving the cop behind.

He paused, turning back. “Thanks for the ride, sir. You didn’t have to do that.”

“You’re welcome,” Davis said after a beat, smiling warmly at him. Then he frowned. “Kid, know that- it’s not that we don’t appreciate you standing up for that man.” Peter paused, letting the words wash over him. Letting the words throw him back in time to the street and those kids picking on that homeless guy. _Kicking and spitting and shoving and-_

One of them had been wearing a Spider-Man hoodie.

Davis mistook his expression as something else. “Just… let the cops do their job next time, okay? The next person you stand up to might have a gun, and kids like you don’t come back from things like that.”

There was a lot of things that kids like him didn’t come back from, a lot of things he’d experienced and lived through, nevertheless. From taking on alien weapons dealers to shouldering the weight of a fallen building to traveling in space to fight a guy who literally destroyed half the universe-

But all that didn’t matter anymore. So Peter didn’t say anything. Instead, he exchanged a look with May and walked deeper in his home, fists clenching and unclenching at his sides.

“Polite kid. Good kid,” Davis said quickly. He’d been so kind to Peter, even when Peter was sitting in his backseat. He was probably a dad.

May laughed. “You have no idea how much,” she said.

Peter walked away quickly before he could hear anything else.  

It had been a full month since the Guardians dropped him off, and he felt like he was dying a little more every day. But that was hardly Peter Quill’s fault. No, if Peter had to blame anyone, he would blame… himself mostly. Tony Stark, a little bit too.

Former Secretary of State, General Thaddeus E. "Thunderbolt" Ross? A whole heck of a lot.

Behind him, May thanked the officer and closed the door between them. Peter’s attention was caught by that, by her. Somewhere, a phone started ringing. May started walking to him, shook her head and went to the kitchen, digging through her purse. Peter slowly eased onto the couch, eavesdropping.

“What?” May hissed into the speaker. There was a pause. “Yes, that’s how I answer the phone, especially when I know it’s you-”

Once upon a time, Peter thought dully, he could hear the other side of the conversation. May had a temper, but she was usually sweet. There was only one person that inspired that kind of instantaneously negative response, and, as much as Peter didn’t like it, he understood it. He could barely talk to Mr. Stark himself these days—and Peter knew, in his heart of hearts, that Mr. Stark had done his best to protect Peter from the very second Peter landed back on Earth.

He remembered it in flashes:

_“We, uh. We have an unprecedented opportunity here-”_

_Mr. Stark’s quicksilver smile, apologetic and guilty-_

_“Keep your head down. Don’t ask questions-”_

_His tight grip on Peter’s shoulder as he swept Peter inside the Avengers compound-_

_A grim, tired reporter from 2019 announcing to her much-diminished audience, “The vigilante known as Spider-Man is dead-”_

Peter screwed up his face, flinching away from the remembered words.

“Look, I’m his family,” May continued in the other room, voice muffled. “I can handle this without you coming and being so… _you_. Besides, I don’t think he wants to talk to you right now.”

No, Peter wasn’t exactly in the mood for company. He lifted his hands, eyeing his scraped knuckles. His lip and cheek were swelling heatedly. Peter cringed faintly, not at the pain but rather at the lecture he’d get from Tony, the criticism over what he was doing with his new lease on life, on normalcy.

Peter missed the end of the conversation. His hearing wasn’t so great now. His aunt swept into the living room, calm like she wasn’t just yelling at Tony Stark on the phone.

“So,” she said brightly. “Have a chance to review Midtown’s Accelerated Learner Program?”

Right, his reason for leaving the apartment. Peter sat up, rubbing the tip of his nose. “Mr. Harrington said I’m not qualified.” The teacher hadn’t been cruel about it, just very firm that the program was designed for students who had missed a year or so of schooling because of the Infinity Affair. It wasn’t for troubled kids who went MIA after the fact.

“Get a GED. It’s basically the same thing,” the teacher said before closing the door on Peter’s face.

It wasn’t the same thing. It looked different on people’s transcripts and resumes, which was why the accelerated learner’s course was created. Right now, Peter looked like a drop out. Even worse, he looked like a drop out and a runaway who had selfishly used the Infinity Affair as a shield for his melodrama.

May twitched. Her gaze turned fiery. RIP, Mr. Harrington.

But she bit down on her temper with a thin smile. “Well, your principal disagrees,” she said cheerfully, stepping out of the room. She came back with a thick binder of papers, dropping it into Peter’s open hands. “I spoke to him personally and signed you up, just in case- um.” May paused, awkwardly tiptoeing around the fact that Peter had barely been out of the apartment in days. “Anyway, Mr. Morita and I both believe you can test out of most of these.”

At her gesturing, Peter obligingly opened the binder to the neatly bookmarked pages that marked the courses he had left to officially graduate. It was a tiny gesture, but May brightened up at his acquiescence, her false bravado fading under real confidence. She perched on the arm of the couch, wrapping an arm around Peter’s shoulders. Peter watched her wordlessly.

He was a shitty, shitty nephew.

She pointed at an orange tabbed section over his shoulder. “I set up your first test for the last Friday of the month. It’s on this topic. I know, I know—it’s soon. But it’s physics! Your favorite.”

And like that, May warmly walked him through the rest of the courses. There were about four classes he could test out of, but he’d still have to sit through another history course. He also had two years’ worth of assignments for English, but he decided on how fast or how slow to sit through them. But Peter could test out of most of his science and math classes, no problem. Morita even left a handwritten note that, with sufficient evidence, one year of science could be waived because of his internship with Stark Industries.

An internship that never really existed for a man who never wanted him and a team that would never find him.

Peter’s shoulders tightened. Well. That wasn’t exactly fair, was it?

Again, he remembered that first day home in pieces:

_Jittery Mr. Stark, checking for bugs like a prisoner in his own home-_

_“You have to believe that I was looking for you. You have to. We reverse engineered everything we could get our hands on, and still couldn’t get out of this damn galaxy-”_

_The grip he had on Peter’s shoulders, like he wanted to hug him, but just didn’t have the time or safety to do so-_

_“Thor only knows the realms. Nebula had maps in her head and no familiar context for us to work from. Strange was no help at all. A pathway has to be set or he has to know his destination very well. Between all of us, we couldn’t pinpoint Titan on a single map-”_

_A harshly whispered plea. “I never stopped looking for you, kid-”_

Peter pushed away the binder, suddenly nauseated. “What’s the point?”

May blinked at him rapidly. “What’s the point?” She pointed at the binder. “Your future is the point.”

Peter shoved the binder aside, launching to his feet. Ned and MJ were both at MIT, and Peter longed to be with him. It had been his dream school. But no matter how Morita packed this scenario, on paper? It was going to look like he was a monumental screwup—so far away from MIT material, it was laughable.

And he could have dealt with all that. Really. It wasn’t the end of the world. The end of the world was an alien deciding that half of the universe didn’t deserve to exist, and Peter had _survived_ that. There were bigger things in life than Lady Macbeth and her damn spots. 

But one of those bigger things was… it was-

Spider-Man. And Tony Stark took him away:

_“You would love Helen Cho and what she can do with nanotech in medical settings. This isn’t one of hers, though. This is mine. Self-replicating. Self-sustaining, more or less. Sophisticated enough to operate on individual genes in a strand of DNA. Able to bind to and neutralize genetic abnormalities that cause illnesses, disease, organ failure-”_

_A playlist of news stories of people like him, families like him, new targets under the ever tightening Accords controlled by General Ross-_

_“I painted a picture of you, you see? Peter Parker, my plucky little intern, straying too close to the fight, getting picked up by a bunch of aliens looking for souvenirs. In the end, you were a statistic—one of many people stolen during the Infinity Affair. Spider-Man doesn’t fit with that story, and you know it. Spider-Man was on a different ship following a different storyline with a different ending-”_

_The clever editing of a suit’s recording on a faraway planet. Thanos slamming him so hard against the ground, it looked like he’d been murdered rather than merely winded-_

_“Ross is coming for you, and he’s going to take you. If there is any bit of abnormality in your blood that can’t be chalked up as normal space debris or space radiation, you’re never going home. I don’t care if it’s right or legal; he won’t let you. You’ll automatically become a threat in his eyes when he sees the mutatio-”_

_“You don’t get it! This is a post truth world, Peter. If you’re going to get anywhere, you need to get ahead of the lie and control it. Sell it. I have the road map, kiddo. All you need to do is follow it, and quickly. Coulson can give us only so much time-”_

Heat flushed up his face. Slowly, he turned to face his aunt. “What future do I have without- without…” Spider-Man.

May stared at him for a long moment. But before the first heavy tear fell, she was up and engulfing him into a giant, slightly painful hug. After a moment, he reciprocated.

It wasn’t just that he’d lost Spider-Man. He’d lost himself too, or at least the body he was familiar with. Just last week, he’d spent half the day not being able to see. Everything was awash in a sea of blinding, white light, like when he used to hyperfocus and pass out at the sign of windshields in the summer sun. Then he was nailed in the head with a rogue basketball. The kids from the neighbor court apologized, but, for a whopping 20 minutes, his vision finally corrected. Now it was getting blurry around the edges again. He was starting to worry that he might have to renew his glasses prescription for the first time in years.

His strength was gone. His healing went back to being slow. His senses could no longer be trusted. And his sixth sense? That extra bit of warning he liked to call his Spidey sense? Absolutely useless. It didn’t warn him about the basketball, and it didn’t warn him that the bullies picking on that homeless guy had a taller, meaner friend. Instead, it screamed at him randomly in the middle of the night, waking him up out of a dead sleep. The first time it did that, Peter stuck the ceiling for half a second before falling and almost breaking his arm against his desk.

Some tiny, petty park of him wanted to tell Mr. Stark that his cure, by whatever mechanism it bound to his Spidey genes and made them look normal, was only partially effective. It got him through military testing without raising any alarms, but that was it. Mr. Stark might as well remove the nanotech in Peter’s blood.

If only Mr. Stark hadn’t made it permanent. Like a cap welded shut on a water bottle, he’d said. The water was still there, but no one was gonna drink out of it.

Peter could have dealt with that. He could live being a shittier Spider-Man. He’d figure a way around his worsening powers. But Mr. Stark’s cure wasn’t stagnant at all. No, it seemed to be getting more and more effective as time moved on as it propagated and arrested all expression of his genetic abnormality.

With every day that passed, Peter was getting increasingly and horribly closer to being… normal. And he just couldn’t take it.

Like she knew the direction of his thoughts, May clutched Peter a little tighter to her. Then she released him a little, petting his hair. “Okay. Okay. You’re mourning.”

“I didn’t lose anyone,” Peter muttered.

“You’re still mourning. For Spider-Man, right?” Instead of responding, Peter rubbed his sleeve over his face, eyes directed downward. “Neither I nor Mr. Stark have been particularly sympathetic to that.”

That was a delicate way of putting it. Mr. Stark’s preference on the matter was something he made absolutely clear from the get-go, and May’s sheer relief at the announcement Peter no longer had powers would be burned on his retinas for all time.

May lightly gripped his shoulders and squeezed a little, catching his attention. “But try and see it from my perspective a little.” Her mouth was trembling and her eyes were shiny. “You were gone for 2 years. _Two years, Peter._ ” She shook her head. “I don’t miss Spider-Man. Spider-Man took my nephew from me and dropped him on _an alien planet_ -”

“I made those choices myself, May,” Peter interrupted. “And they were the right ones.”

“Bullshit,” she fired back. “You were a child. You had no business fighting that- that-”

Peter jerked away from her. “It was my responsibility! If something that bad is happening, I need to act!”

May crossed her arms over her chest. “Well, it’s no longer your responsibility. No superpower, no superhero duty. Deal with it.”

How quickly their conversation had turned, Peter would think later. From hugs to shouting. The swing alone should have alerted him to step back and breathe a little. Instead, he rode the emotion and made things worse.

“Right,” Peter said bitterly. He stalked past her, beelining for his room. “Because that’s going to keep me safe.”

Peter didn’t get that far. May was tracking him, not ready to end the conversation. “What was that?”

Peter spun on his heel. He glowered at her for a second before snapping, “I don’t need super powers to put myself in harm’s way, May. _Look at Ben!_ ”

Peter could have slapped her and hurt her less. He regretted it, instantly.

Because before his eyes, his aunt was withdrawing. Light was fading out of her expression. Her shoulders were falling. She looked infinitely smaller and older than she had just a few minutes ago when she was happily leading him through his new education plan.

Peter was a shitty, shitty, _shitty_ nephew.

May’s spine straightened. “You’re right,” she said quietly, tone defeated. She looked anywhere but at him. “You don’t need to be a superhero to be on the wrong end of a runaway bus or an a-a-asshole with a gun.” She looked up at him then, her eyes glittering with suppressed tears. “We’re all going to meet death someday. You don’t have to run towards it.”

She turned away from him, leaving. Unable to help himself, Peter bounded after her, looping his arms around her waist and burying his forehead against her shoulder blades. “I’m sorry. May, I’m sorry. I’m sorry-”

Still turned away from him, May sucked in a heavy, wet breath, the pain in it causing tears to spring to Peter’s eyes.

Peter missed Ben the most in moments like this. He used to be a buffer when his temper and hers clashed like this. When he’d died, they’d built up protective walls around each other, trying to fill in the void as best as they could. He’d become so eager to please her, and she’d become so eager to see him smile that they rarely fought anymore. He’d forgot about how they would twist each other in arguments until they both wanted to scream.

Peter struggled to remember the pattern. Normally, she’d retreat or he would, and apologies would come the next day. When Ben was alive, he’d spend the time softening their feelings around the argument itself. When Ben was dead, all Peter would ruminate on was the guilt of being at odds with the only family he had left.

But today, she broke the pattern.  They both did—Peter when he reached out to apologize, and May when she turned around to accept it.

“I am too. I’m sorry you’re suffering, sweetheart.”

Peter was taller than her now. That didn’t stop her from pulling his head down to her shoulder. He hugged her tightly, gratefully.

“It’ll be okay. I’ll be okay. I just… need to process.” Then, honestly, he said, “I never wanted to make you cry.”

“Seems like it’s the only thing you Parker boys do consistently,” she teased thickly. She tugged on a strand of his hair. Snickering, he sagged into her, letting himself be 16, 13, 8 again.

After a beat though, she stopped letting him hide. She cupped his face with her hands. “I know it’s everything you wanted. I know it let you be a hero and made a change in the world.” Her eyebrows needled together briefly, apologetically. “But Peter, I don’t want that life for you. I never wanted that life for you. I wanted you to be happy and be successful and be loved and die peacefully in your bed at the age of 110.”

Peter blinked at her. “That’s a tall order.”

“Well, as it turns out, I’m a demanding mom.” May smoothed his hair back, tucking one of the longer, curling strands behind his ear. Then she flattened her hands against his shoulders. “I know you need time to process. Let me know if there’s something I can do to make it easier on you.”

Peter smiled shyly. “Just be you?”

“Flattery will get you everywhere.” May kissed his cheek noisily. “Burr, you’re cold. Hot cocoa?”

Peter followed her to the kitchen, utterly exhausted. While she bustled around, making up her special hot chocolate recipe, Peter gave into temptations and put his head down on the kitchen table.

He let himself imagine a bit if he’d taken Quill up on his offer to stay a Guardian. He’d be fighting weird and weirder aliens right now. He’d be figuring out what made Quill’s ship work. He’d be sparring with Gamora and Drax or arguing with Quill about the merits of eighties movies. He’d be chatting and getting to know Rocket, Groot, and Gamora’s homicidal but totally badass looking sister. He’d still be Spider-Man.

But none of it would be on Earth. None of it would be near Aunt May or Mr. Stark or his friends or his city—New York, which he still loved so much.

There was a knock on the front door. May paused, looking over. “Now who could that be?” she questioned quietly, turning the heat off on the stove. She went to the front part of the apartment.

Peter rubbed his eyes with the heels of his palms. Then rubbed them again when May hurried back in the room, hands clasped in front of her chest worriedly.

“Um. Don’t hate me. But I may have invited someone over.”

Peter hastily wiped at his face again, feeling ill-prepared. He pushed out of his seat, tugging self-consciously at his clothes, aware that his own blood still dotted the collar of the stretched-out Midtown High sweater. Would May really invite Tony Stark after ripping him a new one on the phone? Ugh. Peter didn’t know what Mr. Stark would lecture him more about—being reckless now that he had no super powers or being an asshat who made his aunt cry. Peter so wasn’t in the mood.

But May’s guest had followed her in, and it wasn’t Mr. Stark at all.

Ned Leeds took up the entire doorway but didn’t stop to stare. Instead, his friend dropped his head, barreling into Peter with almost enough force to knock him over.

“Whoa!” If Peter thought May’s hugs were tight, Ned’s were a whole other level of desperate. The kind of tight that came with drowning victims and floatation devices.

“Oh my god,” Ned said very quietly in the vicinity of Peter’s left armpit.

“Holy crap, dude,” Peter greeted, voice coming out a little wheezy.

Ned released him almost instantly. “Holy crap yourself,” Ned countered, face lit up like sunshine. Peter laughed in awe, which started off a series of pats and claps of each other’s shoulders as they circled each other like excited puppies. Exclamations and ‘how have you been’s tripped out of their mouths without a care if they were repetitive, nonsensical, or already said.

May smiled to herself and backed out of the room, leaving them to themselves.

Laughing, Peter could hardly believe his eyes. Ned was taller than Peter now (by a hair) and broader than Peter remembered. His thick hair was long for once and pulled back into a neat ponytail. He had a full but neatly trimmed beard. Under that beard was the same Ned Leeds beam—full hearted and genuine.

Peter was a little jealous of the facial hair, and let Ned know all about it. “Who the hell let you go through second puberty when I was gone?” Even Ned’s voice was slightly deeper.

Ned tugged on his beard self-consciously. “You like it? All the engineering students are doing it. Well, the guy ones, anyway.”

“What are you doing here? It’s- it’s in the middle of the semester.” And MIT wasn’t a school you just ditched for fun.

Ned swatted his arm. “Dude, you were dead—missing. Of course I was going to haul butt back here when I heard you were back.” He went starry eyed with interest. “So, like, space?”

Peter grinned. “So cool.”

“ _Cool._ ”

They took the chat back to the living room. The second they sat back down on the couch, Peter launched into a rundown everything that happened from the moment Peter ditched their field trip. (Classified, what?) It was through Ned’s awe that Peter recalled some of his own buried excitement about the things he’d been through.

Like Titan? Minus the scariness and the loneliness? Totally sick. Space travel? Awesome. And the fact that he’d fought alongside the Avengers and the Guardians and an actual wizard? WOW. How freaking cool was that?

The pent-up giddiness carried him through almost the whole story. That is, until he got to the point of where he was acting out the Guardians’ impromptu landing in the middle of the Avengers compound, and his friends’ subsequent need to haul ass out of there. The incoming military helicopters. Mr. Stark’s strained attempt to get him inside—and relatively hidden—the maze that was the Avengers Compound so that he had enough time to talk to Peter alone. The not so welcoming welcome party.

“Whoa,” Ned said slowly, eyes huge.

Peter stopped the story. There was nothing worth sharing after that. He sat down on the couch next to Ned again, gripping his knees. “So. What’s up with you?”

“Absolutely nothing,” Ned said breathlessly, still starry eyed. Then he blinked, seizing up slightly. “Wait. Um. I may have told MJ that you’re Spider-Man.”

“What?” Peter squawked, betrayed. “ _Ned-_ ”

Ned threw his hands up. “What? I thought I sent you to your death, and I did, sort of.” Ned was visibly upset. “I was grieving, okay? She was too. I needed her- I needed _someone_ to know. I wasn’t expecting you to be alive, Peter.”

Peter stared at him. Then he looked down at his hands. What a horrible situation he’d left his best friend in. But, in the end…

“It doesn’t matter,” Peter said quietly. “Spider-Man is gone. Mr. Stark took it away, locked up the only part of me that could ever make a difference.”

Ned didn’t ask any questions about that that, even though Peter hadn’t shared that part of the story. Maybe May had discretely passed that information along. Peter felt pathetically relieved. He didn’t have to live through that day one last time.

Ned hesitated, then clapped a hand on Peter’s shoulder. “Peter…” Ned started quietly, confidingly. He hesitated again, and for so long, Peter wondered if he lost his train of thought. Then, suddenly, he burst out with, “People get super powers, like, all the time.”

Ned said that like it meant something inherently. Like Peter should just get what he was talking about. “So?”

Ned turned to him fully, expression determined. “So… How many of them squared off against Thanos? How many of them fought off a bad dude’s attempt to steal a bunch of high tech weapons, then saved him from his own mess so a classmate didn’t have to lose a dad? How many of them skipped out of clubs and field trips and prom to go out there and do the right thing?” He gripped Peter’s shoulder a little tighter. “The part that made a difference isn’t your superpowers. It’s you.”

Peter felt like he’d been punched in the throat by the Hulk. He looked down quickly, away from his friend, unable to take what Ned was saying. Peter swallowed rapidly, grinding his teeth together to keep his expression neutral—not that it was very effective. His ears were burning red.

Knowing Peter was having a moment, Ned just continued, like a bro. “So, the way I see it, Spider-Man was cool, but it was also, like… an instant gratification thing, right? Immediate change. Immediate results. But before Spider-Man, there was you, and your brain and your geekiness and your smarts and your heart. That hasn’t gone away, right? You can still make a difference. It just might take a while.”

“Delayed gratification,” Peter rasped out with a laugh.

“Yeah.” Ned waved his hand in a loose arc into the future. “Invent your way into making the world a better place. That was Plan A all along, right? Ever since-”

Peter was already smiling. He was finally able to look up. “Ever since we watched that documentary on Mr. Stark’s first miniaturized arc reactor. God, how long ago was that?”

Ned’s parents had taken them to a showing. He remembered fighting in place, staring up in open mouthed awe at Mr. Stark’s giant face—open and passionate like he rarely was elsewhere—as the man spiritedly advocated for the use of technology and science in making the world a better place.

That was Peter’s dream. Then high school happened, and bullies and uptick in crime rates and… Ben. 

“Right. Back to Plan A.” And, for a moment, Peter’s mind raced with all the bright possibilities ahead. Then Peter’s face screwed up. “There’s no way I’m getting into MIT.”

Ned shrugged. “So? You could get into ESU. Midtown’s really tight with them, and Morita really likes you. You’ll get so many recommendations.” Ned pulled out his phone, his fingers flying over the screen. “Plus, ESU is where it’s _at_.”

“Sure,” Peter said with a flat sigh, mood dipping again.

“Dude, seriously. Check out the faculty.” Ned shoved his phone in Peter’s hands. “Dr. Curt Connors? Norman Osborn? Otto Octavius and Reed Richards and Hank freaking McCoy? Even Bruce Banner gives guest lectures there sometimes. You don’t see that guy traveling as far as MIT. He’s barely in the country as is.”

Peter kept scrolling through the faculty. “Maybe,” he said quietly.

“No maybes about it.” Ned shot out. He turned around, facing Peter. “This is it. This is you, Peter 2.0. Where’s that camera of yours?” Not seeing Peter’s ubiquitous camera anywhere, he made do, framing Peter with his hands.

“I liked Peter 1.0,” Peter countered through a helpless smile.

Ned dropped from his exaggerated photographer stance. A worried expression passed over his face. “Peter… you know Spider-Man couldn’t last forever, right?”

That was news to Peter. “Why not?”

“I’m pretty sure Liz’s dad was ready to murder you that one time,” Ned reminded him. “Can you imagine how many enemies you’d pick up if you were Spider-Man for much longer?” Peter never thought of it that way. “It’s probably better that it ended now, you know? Spider-Man was a learning experience. It helped more than just other people. It helped you. It got your priorities in check. You got to meet interesting people, learn interesting things. Now Spider-Man is over, and you have to take what you’ve learned and apply it to the real world.” Ned lit up. “Just like an internship!”

“Ha ha.”

Ned plucked the Accelerated Learner Program binder from where it was wedged in the couch. After a beat, he put it in Peter’s hands. “You gotta start somewhere, dude.”

Behind him and in the reflection of the television, he saw May giving Ned a thumbs up. Ned did well, not acknowledging the feedback.

Peter watched the grayed reflection of his aunt for a moment longer before dropping his gaze back to the binder. Ned sat down with him, making interested noises. He was being ganged up on, he knew it. That still didn’t stop him from opening the binder to the first section, reading over the introductory spiel.

_Welcome to Midtown High’s Accelerated Learner Program! Since 2019, Midtown has been the leading provider of alternative parallel education for individuals who have been involuntarily removed from their academic settings. The average student enrolled in this program will take anywhere from 2 to 3 years to graduate with their high school diploma-_

No. 2 years was too long. He’d lost so much time already, and if he had any hope of catching up with Ned and MJ and the rest of his classmates, he had to put his all into this.

He wasn’t going to graduate in 2 years. He was going to graduate in 1—less than one, if he could identify more classes to test out of.

He had to get Plan A back on track. He didn’t have any other choice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next Fic: "No Difference Who You Are"
> 
> Summary:  
> New York was always full of surprises for Wade… usually of the traffic, people, and crime variety. But when Vanessa becomes friendly with a random college student—friendlier than he would expect from his usually prickly bae—Wade finds himself staring down the unexpected possibility that Wade+Nessa=5ever might not be as set in stone as he thought. He would never stand in the way of Vanessa’s happiness. Never. He loved her too much. But goddamn did he hate Peter Parker.
> 
> Excerpt:  
> The first time Peter Parker saw Vanessa Carlysle up close and personal, he gasped. Not because she was hands down the most beautiful woman he had ever seen (which she was). Not because he was an awkward 23-year-old with no game (which he was). And certainly not because she surprised him when he rounded the corner (which she did). 
> 
> No. He gasped because she was pressing a three-inch blade just under his belly button.
> 
> “I charge extra for creepy.” Vanessa smiled, her dark eyes cold. “Explain yourself. 140 characters or less.”


End file.
